


Paradigm Shift

by MissBegottenLit (SoulTinkerer)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Hydra Trash, Multi, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Rape/Non-con - Freeform, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2018-06-08 12:49:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 34,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6855355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoulTinkerer/pseuds/MissBegottenLit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the revelations and epic beatdown in Siberia, Tony is left with unlimited access to all the files and data stored in the bunker. He expects to find evidence of the Winter Soldier’s past crimes, but he finds so much more. </p>
<p>OR--Tony goes looking for evidence he can use to crucify the Winter Soldier and instead finds Hydra trash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Longing

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [СМЕНА ПАРАДИГМЫ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8579644) by [Tressa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tressa/pseuds/Tressa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to say one more time, there are some pretty epic spoilers for Civil War, so be warned! Also there will be some fairly explicit Hydra Trash typical abuse in later chapters. 
> 
> Unbeta-ed, but hopefully you enjoy anyway!

After the epic battle, the paradigm shift, the single most traumatizing hour of his life, the moment he nearly became a murderer, the dropped shield… After everything, Tony had annihilated the bunker. Hadn’t been that hard, actually. The hard part had been getting out of his shattered suit, but once that had been accomplished, he filled the hours until his quinjet’s arrival by lugging all the file boxes to the surface and integrating Friday with the absolute dinosaur of an operating system enough to duplicate and save all the stored data.

He wasn’t going to leave a single shred of evidence behind.

He wasn’t going to let Barnes get away with a damned thing.

Here’s how he saw it: Barnes was Steve’s friend. Fine. He wasn’t a thirteen year old girl; he didn’t need to be jealous. He didn’t need to be hurt that Steve chose Barnes over him. What he needed to do was prove that Barnes was a menace, a threat, a monster. Once he did that, proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt, no one--not even Steve--would want to defend him.

And then Tony would be free to blow his cyborg ass to hell.

The issue was finding the proof. He’d gotten all the files onto the quinjet, flown to the all but empty Avenger’s compound, and hauled them all back out and into his workshop. Surrounded by his gleaming tech and flashing screens, pointedly ignoring the burning bruise on his cheek and the tight, stiff pain in his ribs and shoulder, he opened a box labeled _ноябрь 1954_ and remembered he didn’t read cyrillic.

“Well, damn,” he said, and felt something like a lead coat settle onto his shoulders when he remembered their resident native Russian had switched sides and split.

“I can translate them, boss, if you scan them for me,” Friday said. “I’ve already begun decrypting and translating the data you uploaded.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Tony said, sighing at the thought of picking that damn box up again. Paper was heavy, apparently. He couldn’t quite remember if it was all paper or if it was because these particular files were heavy with sin and tragedy.

He snorted and shook his head. That was way too poetic and dramatic, even for him. It was heavy because he’d gotten his ass kicked by Captain America twice in one day, and because he had at least two cracked ribs.

He slid the yellowing and musty sheets of paper into the scanner.

“Beginning translation now.”

“How long do you think?” Tony asked.

“Long enough for you to see a doctor and get some rest,” Friday said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yeah, well, you’re just about the only one.”

Rhodey was still in the hospital.

Peter was back in Queens.

Nat had gone on the run after T’Challa snitched on her to Ross.

Vision was upstairs somewhere, but on Tony’s way through, he had made it very plain he didn’t want to talk or do anything, really, other than stare at the wall. If Tony ever saw Wanda again, he’d have to find a way to get back at her for breaking the poor guy’s heart.

He remembered seeing her on the Raft, wrapped up in a straight jacket, thrown in a cell, and realized with a twinge of guilt that they were more than even.

Everyone was gone, beat, scattered, broken, jailed, on the run, criminalized… The Avengers were fallen. Zemo had gotten exactly what he wanted, and Tony had helped him get it.

But he didn’t want to think about that, because yeah, it was his fault, but why should he be the one blaming himself for this shitstorm when Steve was the one who wouldn’t sign the Accords? Why was it his fault that Steve leapt into the middle of a mess like a knight in shining armor to save his old pal Bucky, his damsel in distress, his princess in the tower, his Rapunzel with that ridiculous hair of his?

Why did he feel like all of this was his fault when Barnes had _fucking assassinated his parents?_

No. There was something in these files, something that would prove him right, something he could show Steve to convince him how wrong he was. There had to be. He just needed to find it. He pulled pages and pages out, stacked them on the scanner to wait their turn, and was just about to run upstairs to grab some painkillers when Friday turned on his displays and said, “First report ready.”

When Tony sat and opened the file, his fingers were trembling. He told himself he was just twitchy, anxious to get started.

 

_Report--_

_Codename: Winter Soldier_

_Field Test, 5 November 1954_

_All objectives achieved. Codename: Winter Soldier encountered no difficulty on mission. As predicted, Americans and allies mistook him for one of their own and allowed him unimpeded entrance into West Berlin. Winter Soldier spent the evening in a Berlin nightclub among many US and UK servicemen, unsuspected._

_A military jeep overturned at 2:45, killing three soldiers en route to base from nightclub. The crash was not investigated, as it was assumed to be a drunken roadway accident. On mission completion, Winter Soldier crossed the border and returned to his handlers without incident._

_Further assignments under evaluation._

_Additional Note:_

_I believe it is important to note that even after several hours incognito, surrounded by his countrymen and free to fight or flee, Winter Soldier’s obedience conditioning and physical compliance protocols are still firmly in place. While we have yet to achieve the desired fawn response, he has long since relinquished any fight response regarding his handlers, and all assertive language skills have been eradicated. Obedience training will continue until deemed no longer necessary._

 

“Assertive language skills...” Tony muttered to himself, rereading the report.

“It means telling people what you do and do not want,” Friday supplied.

“Right. So, talking.”

“For you, maybe.”

“Mm.” So Barnes didn’t have a spine--he didn’t say no. That wasn’t anything Tony didn’t know already. If he’d grown a pair and said no, there were dozens, maybe even hundreds of people who might still be alive today. There were already a handful of assassinations credited to the Winter Soldier, even before the world knew who he was. But these American soldiers and the others he knew were waiting in dusty files--the deaths made to look like accidents or pinned on someone else--were what interested Tony. The kills Steve knew about didn’t seem to bother him. Maybe the unknown ones would, especially when they were as pointless as these. Three deaths, for what? A field test? An experiment? To see what would happen when Hydra let their attack dog off the leash?

The report didn’t list the soldiers’ names. Should be easy enough to find though, since he already knew the date, location, and manner of their deaths. He was going to start keeping a list. Maybe he would tattoo the names on Barnes’s face when he caught him, so he could never again hide what he was.

“Got anything else yet?” Tony asked.

“A few jpegs,” Friday said. “This decryption is slow-going. And there’s a call for you.”

“Take a message,” he said, missing Jarvis. Friday did her best, but she wasn’t the same. He decided to take another look at her programming later. “Show me the pics.”

He expected crime scene photos, trashed rooms, dead bodies, maybe a couple Hydra assholes popping open a bottle of champagne to celebrate a successful assassination. However, the images Friday pulled up weren’t of the Winter Soldier’s victims. They were of the Winter Soldier, and they were ancient. Black and white and grainy, they must have been photographs scanned by Hydra in an attempt to go digital.

The first and oldest was Barnes, unconscious on a hospital bed, the left arm of his SSR uniform a mangled, bloody mess. Must have been right after he’d fallen, Tony thought, and he wondered if Steve had already been on ice when this photo was taken.

Next was Barnes in some kind of chair. He was struggling, of the grimace on his face and the taut lines of his muscles were anything to go by, and his dark, shaggy hair was sticking to his sweaty forehead. He was surrounded and dwarfed by some kind of machine. “Be on the lookout for any specs on this device,” Tony told Friday. “I want to know what it is and how it works.”

The third photo again showed Barnes, this time from behind.  He was only recognizable by the striking lack of a left arm. He was in the nude on his knees, and the blurry shapes of some Hydra agents were visible in the background. Oddly, the focus of the shot seemed to be the broad expanse of Barnes’s shoulders. For a moment, Tony wondered why anyone had bothered to take this picture, when he remembered Hydra had been experimenting on him. Experiments required documentation. Tony did it, too; Dum-E and U had videoed him countless times. This photo was probably a record of Barnes before the metal arm, before they pumped him full of more experimental super-soldier serum, before they put him in cryo for the first time… Take your pick. Tony didn’t much care what it was.

“There’s a message for you, boss,” Friday interrupted.

“Recordings can wait. I’m busy,” Tony said.

“You’ll want to hear this one. It’s about Colonel Rhodes.”

Tony was halfway to swiping to the next image when his hand froze. “What about him?”

“He’s out of surgery,” Friday said. “They expect him to wake up in a few hours.”

After the briefest hesitation, he closed the files and headed for the door. “Be a dear and pull the car around for me.”

“Any chance I can convince you to see a doctor while you’re there?”

“Maybe,” Tony said. “If you say pretty please and promise to have everything else translated and decrypted by the time I get back.”

“Begging was never my style,” Friday said. “But the files will be ready.”

“That’s my girl,” Tony said and left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be pulling Winter Soldier missions and targets from Captain America: The Winter Soldier Part 3 (the comic). Of course I'll be adding my own evil twist...
> 
> I feel like this fic might break me, but I hope to have the next chapter up soon. Thanks for reading!


	2. Rusted

_Mission Report: WINTER SOLDIER_

_Cairo, 11 January 1955_

_Objective: United Nations Diplomatic Team_

_All targets eliminated without incident. Fire reported as accident. Winter Soldier reached extraction point unnoticed and returned to handlers._

_Additional Note: _

_Unlike past missions, the method of termination was chosen by Winter Soldier. While the fire was successful in eliminating the targets and displacing the blame, his choice presents certain features of interest. It shows that a somewhat alarming amount of creativity and free will may have survived the mental implantation process. Or, more disturbingly, these traits may have been eradicated but are now returning._

_Agents responsible for Winter Soldier’s obedience training have noted no abnormalities in his physical compliance protocols. However, in order to circumvent any possible future noncompliance, I am recommending the following changes and--_

 

"You look like crap."

Tony jumped a bit and looked up from his phone to see that Rhodey was awake. His eyelids were heavy and his voice was raspy from the meds, but he was awake, and all of his customary snarkiness was still intact. He slipped his phone back in his pocket. Reading more files Friday had translated and sent to him wasn't the best way to kill time while waiting for Rhodey to come up from the anesthesia, but it was the only thing that would distract him from this shit-storm, keep his hands still, and stop him from turning the myriad of machines monitoring Rhodey into Optimus Prime.

"Mr. Sleeping Beauty himself, awake, and I didn't even get a chance to kiss you."

"If you ever kissed me, I think I'd just stay asleep forever out of shame," Rhodey said, and he somehow mustered up the energy to roll his eyes. “Seriously, what happened? You look like you went twelve rounds with a cinderblock.”

"Try twelve rounds with some vibranium,” Tony said. As promised, he'd had a doctor look him over while he was waiting for Rhodey to wake up. A couple stitches and a prescription for some seriously good meds later, he was right as rain. Or as right as he could be, considering he'd seen a videotape of his parents’ murder less than 48 hours ago. “But I don’t want to talk about me, I want to talk about you.”

Rhodey snorted. “That’s a first.”

“How are you feeling?”

He took a deep breath. “Feelin’ next to nothing below the waist.”

“Poor choice of words,” Tony said with an apologetic shrug.

“You think?” he said. “Look, I’m in a hospital bed, I just got out of surgery, they pumped me full of the good stuff--right now the last thing I want to talk about is the fact that I’ve been trying to move my big toe for the last five minutes and I haven’t been able to do it. So tell me something. Tell me anything.”

Tony thought about that for a moment. He could tell Rhodey about the time he’d nearly burnt down his fancy prep school with his science fair project. He briefly debated telling him about the first time he got drunk. Rhodey had been there, but it was still a good story. He could even talk about his ill-fated adventure through Stark Industries’s accounting department years ago, but the day he first met Pepper wasn’t something he wanted to think about just then.

So instead, he told Rhodey about Siberia. He told him about Zemo, the tape, Barnes, the shield. He told the whole story while looking at the floor, or at the the IV stand, or at the stupid picture of daffodils on the off-white wall--basically looking anywhere but at Rhodey’s face. When he finally met Rhodey’s eyes, he saw what he’d been dreading: pity. Here was his best friend, in a hospital bed, unsure of whether he would ever be able to walk again, and _he_ felt sorry for _Tony_.

If he hadn’t been in such rough shape already, Tony would have decked him.

“Where did Rogers and Barnes go?”

“If I knew, I’d be there already.”

Rhodey just nodded, and Tony caught a flicker of something on his face.

“What?” he asked.

“What, what?”

“What’s that look for?” Tony asked. “You look even more constipated than usual, what is it?”

“It’s just… you’re not going to go after them again, are you?”

“If I find them, I sure as hell will,” Tony said. “If Ross finds them first, the Accords won’t give me a choice.”

“And what will you do if you see Barnes again?”

“Melting his face off sure sounds tempting.” Lots of things sounded tempting, up to and including finding a hole somewhere to crawl into and just die already, but while he’d always had poor impulse control, resisting temptation had always been something he’d been able to do.

“So you’d execute a man without a trial?”

Jesus, why did all of his friends have to be such moral, upstanding assholes? “Trial? There doesn’t need to be a trial. I saw the tape!” Besides, Rhodey hadn’t been on his high horse asking for a trial when they’d found Barnes in Romania and had been given orders to shoot him on sight.

“I’m not saying Barnes shouldn’t be in prison or in a psych ward, I’m just saying there’s a difference between revenge and justice.”

“Difference? Like what?”

“Like whether or not my best friend becomes a murderer.”

“You want to talk to me about murderers? I saw the tape.” Third time. That was the third time he’s said the phrase _I saw the tape_ in front of Rhodey, and if he hadn’t been on painkillers, he absolutely would have noticed. Tony was glad he didn’t. He didn’t think he could stand to explain what it was like, to go from thinking his parents died in an accident and boozing and sexing his way through the grief instead of handling it like a goddamned adult, to realizing they were murdered--and not just by anyone, but murdered by the asshole standing right next to him, the dick he’d spent the last week butting heads with a friend over, the man his father recognized and called by name, seconds before he bashed his skull in. He couldn’t tell Rhodey about any of that. The words didn’t exist. “He didn’t flinch. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even care--”

“Which is what makes me think you don’t understand everything about this situation.”

“Right, because I’ve never been held captive by a group of evil assholes who wanted to force me to use my abilities to hurt people. What could I possibly understand about that?”

The look on Rhodey’s face was somewhere between impatience and compassion. “Hydra had him for over seventy years--The Ten Rings had you for three months. I think it’s a little bit different.”

“They only had me for three months because I beat them,” Tony spat. "I outsmarted them. I didn’t give an inch, and I walked out of that cave _Iron Man._ He should have done something. He should have thought of a way out.”

Rhodey gave him a small, sad smile. “Not everyone can think like you do, Tony.”

Tony sighed and leaned back in his chair. That, when it came right down to it, was the genesis of all his problems. “I’m going to go find your doctor. Tell them you’re awake.” He left before Rhodey could argue or say anything else that would feel like a punch to the gut.

He found someone easily enough, but then they wouldn’t let him back into Rhodey’s room while they were checking him over. Something about privacy and confidentiality and no non-family allowed--basically a big screw you to the guy who was 1) footing the bill and 2) responsible for this mess in the first place. Never mind the fact that, while he might not have been Rhodey’s family, Rhodey was definitely his.

Instead of throwing a hissy fit, he went and got the world’s worst cup of coffee before finding the closest waiting room. There were other people there, including a family who, from the sounds of it, were running an experiment to determine if their infant could scream loudly enough to make people’s ears bleed. He went to the corner that was farthest away from everyone, sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair, and pulled his phone out again. _You don’t understand everything about this situation_ , Rhodey had said. Fair enough. Luckily for him, and unluckily for Barnes, he had the world’s smartest computer and a stack of old files to help him understand everything about the situation. He opened the file Friday had sent him and picked up reading where he left off.

 

_Agents responsible for Winter Soldier’s obedience training have noted no abnormalities in his physical compliance protocols. However, in order to circumvent any possible future noncompliance, I am recommending the following changes and additions to his training schedule:_

_-The list of agents included in training sessions will be extended to include Denisov, Uspensky, and Artemiev. As Zakharov and Vassiliev have already established a rapport with Winter Soldier, they will continue in their roles and work to include their new comrades in their routine._

_-The reward/punishment ratio included in these training sessions has become skewed. We do not want to eradicate the initiative and creativity seen in Cairo, we merely want to ensure codename: Winter Soldier always uses these valuable skills in ways that are aligned with his directives and missions. In order to accomplish this, the reward component of his training will be reserved only for sessions directly following a successful mission._

_-Supervision of Winter Soldier will be increased and limited to a list of approved agents. While in the past we have ignored and even encouraged unscheduled discipline, we can no longer risk any interference to his obedience training. Any agent found taking advantage of and misusing the asset’s compliance will be dealt with accordingly._

_These changes in policy will be implemented immediately and reevaluated following codename: Winter Soldier’s next successful mission._

 

Ok, so they'd tortured him. If Tony had bothered to think about it, that was a conclusion he would have come to on his own. He couldn't think of any other way. Take the Barnes Steve always talked about, take the Barnes his father had always talked about, try to find him in the Frankenstein's Monster that was the Winter Soldier, and it just didn't make sense. To take a man like Barnes and turn him into that... He wasn't sure he wanted to think about how they did it.

He was lost for a moment, drowning in a tub of cold, rancid water while hard hands gripped his shoulders and neck, held him under, the electromagnet in his chest catching on the rim of tub--

The baby let out a particularly shrill shriek, and Tony had to resist the urge not to chuck his phone at it. He wondered if offering to pay for the kid’s college tuition would be enough to make its parents shut it up.

Some sweat had beaded on his temples, but he took a drink of his coffee anyway and told himself the shudder that ripped through him was because of the disgusting taste and nothing else.

Yeah, he knew a thing or two about torture. Maybe not seventy years full of the stuff, but he he knew the sick thrill of fear at the sight of a rusted knife. He remembered what it was like to know that this was going to hurt, and he remembered the dawning, overwhelming realization that he could stop it, if he just said the right words or did the right thing. And more than anything he remembered making the choice to dig his heels in, to refuse. They wanted him to hurt people? Hell no. They wanted him to break? Fuck them. Even if it meant dying, Tony had chosen ruin them rather than give them what they wanted.

So it didn't matter how they turned Barnes into the Winter Soldier. It didn't matter what Zola or the Russians or Hydra had done to him. There had to have been a crossroads. At some point, he must have had a choice: break or die.

He’d made the wrong choice. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, ok so first, I'm so so so sorry for the crazy long wait between chapters! Life just turned into a crazy hellacious shit-storm for a while, but now things are more or less under control! The wait for the next chapter should be much shorter.
> 
> Second, thanks for the kudos and comments! I wasn't expecting that much of a positive reaction from people, but I sure appreciated it! Any feedback is always welcome :)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Seventeen

Back home again, only now it was emptier than ever. Vision was gone. He left some poetic, melodramatic note about needing to do some soul searching. He was probably on Mars by now, running away from his problems Dr. Manhattan style. Tony should call him up, ask him to take a selfie with Curiosity or bring him back a Martian rock. 

Pepper had also left him a message. 37 to be exact. 16 texts, 9 voicemails, and 12 emails. Funny how she left because Tony seemed to attract and seek out epic battles and colossal messes, and yet it took the biggest mess in the history of Pepper Potts' prestigious career in emotional housekeeping to get her to call him. He didn't call her back. He didn't want to talk to Pepper just then. It would be his undoing. All the strings and duct tape and prayer he'd been using to keep himself together lately would just dissolve into nothing, and he'd fall apart, crumple into a pile at her feet.

In that way, Pepper was a lot like his mom. Tony was a mama's boy, plain and simple. When he was a child, he could handle anything. Strike out playing baseball? Fine. Burn himself welding pieces of his newest robot? Not a problem. Get kicked out of his dad's office or shop for being too noisy or too distracting or just plain  _ being _ ? He shook it off. At least until he saw his mom. She'd give him a smile--sometimes comforting, sometimes sad, sometimes knowing in a  _ we both know you were being a little brat, but I still love you _ kind of way, but always a smile--and then she'd kiss him on the cheek or run her hand through his hair, and just like that, he'd be done. He wouldn't be the tough kid or the young genius or the suave heir to billions anymore, he'd just be Tony. And sometimes Tony cried. Sometimes he got red-faced with anger at dismissal or injustice. Sometimes he was sheepish with the knowledge that he'd been an ass. But whatever Tony was--really was--his mom had still been his mom. She was the only person Tony knew beyond a doubt loved him, and she was the only person he was certain he loved. 

And someone had murdered her.

"How many is that now?" Tony asked as he finished reading yet another Winter Soldier mission report.   


"Seventeen confirmed kills, boss," Friday said. "Combine that with the over two dozen assassinations already on the official record--"   


"And he's almost in the fifties," Tony finished. "Damn." Add his parents to that number, and he  _ was _ in the fifties, not to mention the handful of loyal SHIELD agents he’d killed while Cap was trying to take down project Insight. He’d seen some security camera footage; he should find their names too. Making a mental note of it, he asked, "What's next?"

“Another mission report,” Friday said, and made it appear in front of him.

 

_ Mission Report: WINTER SOLDIER _

_ West Berlin, 14 May 1955 _

_ Objective: NATO General James Keller _

_ Target eliminated with extreme prejudice. Codename: Winter Soldier left the scene without incident, but reached the extraction point seven minutes late. Comrade Zakharov is tasked with interrogating asset to determine what caused this diversion from mission parameters. _

_ Additional note: _

_ The extensive amount of training we have given Winter Soldier has been limited to hand-to-hand combat, along with weapons and vehicle usage. However, in his latest mission he demonstrated truly remarkable skills in the area of marksmanship. I can only assume these are reflex-memories from his previous life. It is unclear if the sudden appearance of these abilities are connected with his abnormal behavior while on mission. _

 

_ Diversion from mission parameters _ … That was the first time Tony had seen anything to suggest Barnes had had any sense of autonomy. He wasn’t sure if that was a point in Barnes’s favor or a nail in his coffin. Was this him fighting what Hydra had done to him, what they had turned him into, or was this ounce of free will always present, just ignored? The former almost made him feel sorry for the guy. The latter… 

He scrolled and realized there was more. 

 

_ Project: WINTER SOLDIER _

_ Session Report, 15 May 1955 _

_ After extensive interrogation, I have determined that codename: Winter Soldier’s late arrival to the extraction point during his mission on 14/5 was caused by a truly inconsequential object: last week’s newspaper. He was distracted by an article chronicling the celebrations marking the 10th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe. While the article seemed to confuse him, he showed no signs of distress and gave no warning that his mental implantation had been compromised. Comrade Vassiliev and I administered corrective discipline on-site in an effort to prevent Winter Soldier repeating this mistake in the future, and I am satisfied this was merely a peculiarity in an otherwise successful mission. This, along with other irregularities and minor failures, will continue to be addressed in his obedience training. _

_ Months after implementing new measures to ensure Winter Soldier’s continued cooperation, he has yet to fully adjust to the changes in our routine. The participation of Denisov, Artemiev, and in particular Uspensky has created a largely unprecedented amount of dismay in the subject. In a few instances, his distress has become so extreme that he has reverted to speaking in English, which prompts us to discipline him further.  _

_ Likewise, mental and emotional engagement are a crucial aspect of obedience training. Recent actions suggest he is resorting to detachment or even dissociation during training sessions. His rote repetition of “May I suck your cock?” has become as troublesome as it is irritating and unconvincing.  _

 

“Friday…” Tony asked, eyes skimming back over the last sentence, heartrate kicking up a level or ten. “Are you sure you translated this right?”

“I can double check,” she said. “Give me a minute.”

He waited as Friday worked, mentally chewing over what he had just read, trying to find a reasonable explanation--a way it could have been misinterpreted, something that could have been lost in translation. But there was a little niggling worm in the back of his mind, something he couldn't name, but something that said  _ I should have seen this coming _ . It was saying it so loudly that he knew what Friday was going to say before she even said it. 

"Looks good, boss," she said, and Tony had to groan at her choice of words. Nothing about this situation looked good. "It's translated as clearly as I can make it." 

He was nearly done with the report, and he wondered for a moment if he wanted to keep reading. His mind felt like his mouth did when he returned from having a cavity filled at the dentist. It was numb, not in the sense that he couldn't feel it, but tingly like a limb that had fallen asleep and sore with the knowledge that he'd be in a world of pain once the feeling came back.

He'd come this far, he thought, and continued reading.    


  
_However, I do not take any of this as a sign that our methods are ineffective. Rather this shows that these sessions are necessary. Any order, action from handlers, or change in routine should be met with acceptance and obedience. Until that level of compliance is achieved, our sessions will continue. We who are tasked with codename: Winter Soldier’s training will merely have to exercise perseverance and creativity in order to achieve our goal._ _  
_ _  
___-A. Zakharov

 

He scrolled a bit farther and saw there was a picture attached labeled  _ Project: WINTER SOLDIER, Session #0531 _ . In a chilling way it resembled one of the images he'd seen on his first day of digging through files. It was black and white and grainy--another photograph scanned in. It showed Barnes from behind, again in the nude on his knees, this time recognizable by the mechanical left arm. Again, there were the indistinct outlines of what Tony assumed were Hydra agents in the dim background. Except for one. One was much too close to Barnes for comfort, his hands tangled Barnes's shaggy, dark hair, the pants of his uniform in a puddle around his ankles. The angle at which the photograph was taken obscured exactly what he was doing to Barnes, but it didn't take a genius to figure it out. 

"Are there more pictures?" Tony asked, his eyes lingering on Barnes's hands. They were not bound behind his back or busy helping his mouth with its job. His arms were hanging docilely at his sides, but his hands were curled into tight fists. 

"Yes, dozens," she said. "A few videos as well."

"Show me the jpegs," Tony said. He didn't think he could stomach a video just then.

Friday pulled them up, and Tony contented himself with skimming them, just enough to confirm that yes, this actually happened. There were dozens, like Friday said, each of them labeled and dated. The newer ones were even in color. The oldest ones dated back to 1945. 

“Why am I only seeing these now?” Tony asked, annoyed. He'd purposefully been working his way through all the files chronologically to make sure he didn't miss a single word, let alone something this significant.

“You asked for mission reports and related intel,” Friday said. “These were filed under obedience training.” 

Tony closed the files, the pictures, everything, and looked blankly around his shop for a moment. Leaning back in his seat, he thought about the myriad ways this situation was completely and absolutely fucked up.  

Sergeant James Barnes, the Howling Commando, the war hero, Captain America’s best friend, on his knees sucking Hydra cock, begging for it, if this Zakharov's report was to be believed… It was betrayal. It was treason. It was a historical plot twist worthy of Game of Thrones.

It was rape. 

Tony could see that, even if he didn’t want to. Even if Barnes had begged for it and meant it, it was rape. Prisoners cannot give consent. 

He wondered if Barnes knew what they had done to him, if he even remembered. Given his confession in the bunker that he remembered all of his kills, Tony thought it was likely he remembered this too. Had Barnes told Steve? Had Steve learned about it under whatever mysterious circumstances he'd learned about Howard and Maria Stark's deaths? Did he even know?

Should Tony tell him?

He’d gone looking for evidence he could use to crucify the Winter Soldier. He’d found just that. Rape was rape, except for when it came to the media, social perception, personal opinions--according to those things, as twisted as all this was, a person's victimhood depended on a number of factors: Are they white? Are they rich? Are they promiscuous? Were they drunk? Were they high? Were they being flirty? What were they wearing? ad nauseum. Given the media's coverage of the attack in Vienna and the manhunt for the Winter Soldier, even with the real culprit exposed and Zemo locked away, there would be no question in people's minds. Barnes would be even more hated than he was now. 

At least, he would be if any of this ever got out. 

It took Tony all of two seconds to decide that no, no one would be getting this information from him. He wasn’t the kind of person to let others do something like this for him. Beyond that, he wasn't entirely sure what to do.  

His father had had a picture on the desk in his office. It had been in black and white, older even than Hydra's. It had shown Howard playing some sort of drinking game with the Howling Commandos in a crowded pub in London. When he was about eleven, Tony had asked why Captain America wasn't in the picture. After all, his father had always talked about the fact that they'd been friends, and Tony had thought he'd caught him in a lie. Rogers was the one who took the picture, Howard had said with a strained and condescending patience. Tony thought about that picture, about the way they'd all been smiling, even Barnes, and something like pity sprouted in his chest. 

He remembered that his father had been smiling too, sitting three feet away from the man who would go on to murder him and his wife. The pity didn't die. It just sort of moved over, made room for the rage that had momentarily taken a backseat.

Lots of people had shitty life experiences, Tony decided. They didn’t all end up with a kill list of more than fifty people. Children were abused, and only a tiny percentage of them grew up to be assholes. And the ones who grew up to be serial killers were still monsters, regardless of what had happened to them in the past. Just because Tony felt sorry for the guy didn’t change the fact that he was guilty of murdering dozens of people. 

“Alright, Friday, we need to backtrack a little,” Tony said, making up his mind and pulling the screens back up. “I need everything related to Barnes, the Winter Soldier, the Russian Boogeyman, whatever they called him. Mission reports, session reports, medical records, photos, videos, everything. Go back as far as you can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a couple things:
> 
> Someone in the comments mentioned that it was interesting the Winter Soldier didn’t have his first successful mission until 1954. I’m using names and dates of missions that I took from the comic Captain America: Winter Soldier Part 3. In that storyline, the Russians find Bucky, save/revive him minus an arm, and then they quickly realize he’s more than they can handle. He even kills a few of them before they put him in cryo for about a decade. They wake him up only after they’ve figured out plans for the arm and for mental implantation. In my head, something similar happened in the MCU. There’s even that cool little scene in CA:TWS when Bucky’s having some flashbacks and he fights some doctors off before they sedate him and put in him cryo. So if you squint a little and tilt your head to the side, it looks sort of the same, and that’s why the Winter Soldier didn’t have his first successful mission until the mid 50’s. 
> 
> Second, I feel the need to say that I am definitely in the camp of “None of this is Bucky’s fault!” It’s just that this fic is really about Tony (another commenter called it a character study and I liked that!) And it’s just interesting to work through this issue from his pov and see what pops up. Like the bit about serial killers still being monsters even though some were abused. 100% did not plan on that, I was planning on super cliche having Tony being all horrified and changing his mind about the issue and then that came around and now I’m off in a different direction. So yeah, it’s meandering and weird, but all I’m really trying to do is force my favorite character in the MCU into a mental state where he doesn’t want to kill my second favorite character, but I’m trying to do it like organically? Ignore me. I’m rambling. 
> 
> Last, thank you all again so much for the kudos and comments and just general response! I’d reply, but I always feel awkward and weird doing that, so just know that I’m very grateful. :)


	4. Daybreak

The files were a mess. In Tony’s anger and rush to get everything out of the Siberian bunker, he’d tossed plenty of files haphazardly into random boxes, knocked one or two over sending papers and dust flying, dropped a few, scattering their papers to the wind. The first file he’d opened and told Friday to scan wasn’t even the oldest one he had, it had simply been the closest. Because of this carelessness and the general chaos that seemed to follow him like thunder followed lightening, he’d long since given up reading in any sort of order. 

It was more than simple text documents, however. There were photos, videos, maps of target locations. After a little digging, Tony even found the schematics for the robotic arm. It was impressive, especially for the 1950's. He was even grudgingly willing to admit it was the world's second best prosthesis. 

Against his better judgement and all common sense, he opened another file. He'd been at it for hours, even though he wasn't sure exactly how many. His eyes felt crusty and his mouth felt slimy, as though he hadn't brushed his teeth for days.  It was impossible to pull away when Hydra had been so thorough in documenting their work with the Winter Soldier. 'Thorough' was too kind a word, he thought, shaking his head as he started another video. 'Obsessed' might be better. This Zakharov certainly seemed to be obsessed with Barnes in downright psychopathic ways. Tony wasn't very surprised--psychopaths were the type of people Hydra tended to attract.

Besides, he wasn't so unaware that the couldn't see his own obsession with the Winter Soldier. 

This video was labeled _Project: WINTER SOLDIER, Session #0749._ The whole crew was present for this one. It was easy to translate what everyone was saying in the video--he’d developed the software ages ago. He’d also watched enough of these to have learned everyone’s names. For instance, Denisov was the short, pudgy one. Artemiev wore wire-rimmed glasses. Uspensky, whose involvement Zakharov had reported seemed to upset Barnes the most, was the only woman. Vassiliev was blond and strapping. He even looked a bit like Steve on the old, blurry video, and Tony couldn’t help but wonder if they’d chosen him based on that reason. And Zakharov… Well, Zakharov was the sadistic bastard.

They had Barnes on his elbows and knees, legs spread wide as Vassiliev rammed into him again and again. His grip on Barnes’s hips would have been tight enough to bruise, if he hadn’t been cursed with supersoldier healing. In the background, the usual suspects stood watching, talking to each other quietly, awaiting their turn or watching for a chance to join in. He couldn’t see Denisov and assumed he was holding the camera. Artemiev even had his cock out, his low-res white hand tugging at it slowly. He couldn’t hear what they were saying or planning. The only sounds were the wet slap of Vassiliev pounding into Barnes and an occasional pant or moan. Barnes never made a sound, not a whimper or shout or a gasp, not even when someone entered him rough and dry. Not unless they told him to. 

Which was Zakharov’s favorite thing to do, apparently. 

Barnes was propped up on his elbows but had his head down, his curtain of dark hair hiding his face from his captors and the camera as he rocked back and forth from the force of Vassiliev’s thrusts. It was the only human reaction Tony had seen in any of these videos so far. Barnes would get on his hands and knees, bend over a table, ride a cock, writhe beneath Uspensky and her wicked hands, but no matter what they were doing to him, he always tried to hide his face. So naturally, they never let him do it for long.

Zakharov sank to his knees in front of Barnes and threaded his fingers through his hair, pulling him up so he was no longer resting on his elbows, but on his hands, his face turned upward. He  raised his other hand and ran his thumb lightly along Barnes’s lips before pushing it into his mouth.   “Always so quiet,” Zakharov said. “Why don’t you tell me what you want?”

Even Tony knew where this was going. He’d seen too many of these videos to not know. 

“I want to suck your cock,” Barnes said, his voice breathless, gravely, and utterly devoid of emotion. It was the dead voice Zakharov had complained about earlier, and every time Tony heard it, he couldn’t help but feel a little flare of victory. Whether consciously or not, Barnes wasn’t giving these assholes what they wanted. 

There was a flash of red and white in his peripheral vision and Tony jumped to close the video. The black and white images disappeared and the sickening slap of skin on skin cut out right as Pepper stepped through the glass doors. 

“What are you doing here? Who died? What’d I do? What time is it? ” Tony spluttered.

Pepper, who by now was an expert at deciphering Tony’s blurted nonsense, merely glared at him, her lips pressed into a single thin line. ”It’s just after daybreak.” 

“Early,” he said. It was the most eloquent thing he could think of.

“Yes, well, I had to come see you before I go to the office to continue cleaning up the colossal mess you made.” 

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that and decided his safest option was to remain quiet.

Pepper continued to glare at him as the silence stretched out, long and thin. Finally she asked, “Are you watching porn?” 

“Um…” Tony closed the holographic screen altogether. He wasn’t actually sure. He’d started questioning Zakharov’s intentions for filming the “obedience training” sessions around midnight the night before. There were so many sessions, all of them so similar, it seemed odd that they would feel the need to record all of them. Unless someone got off on rewatching them later. Whether it counted as pornography or not, Tony certainly wasn’t enjoying it. In fact, he hadn’t been this turned off since Afghanistan. None of that seemed to change the fact that he couldn't seem to pull himself away.

“The media is swarming around Stark Industries,” Pepper said, her voice tightly controlled, but still shaking. “They’re sharks, and the mess with the Accords and your fight with Steve in Germany is chum in the water. The board is tearing itself apart, our numbers are in freefall, and you’re sitting down here with your tools and your toys watching porn?”

Tony just gaped at her. It was all he could do in the face of her full volcanic fury. He hadn’t seen her this angry since his disastrous and destructive birthday party a few years ago, and he’d forgotten how terrifying it could be. Very few people had the ability to render Tony Stark speechless. It was the one aspect of his personality he was most proud of, and the fact that Pepper could make his glib words wither and die in his throat had always been a turn-on. 

However, his silence only seemed to anger her more. She all but stomped her foot in anger and reached to open the screen. He tried to stop her, but she had the window up an instant later and pulled up the last report he’d had on screen.

 

_ Mission Report: WINTER SOLDIER _

_ Madripoor, January 1, 1956 _

_ Objective: British Ambassador Dalton Graines _

_ Target eliminated, along with acceptable collateral damage. Madripoor authorities have no leads. Codename: Winter Soldier escaped the scene unnoticed and returned to handlers without incident. _

 

This report was lacking the  _ Additional Note  _ Tony had come to expect. It meant, as far as he could tell, that the mission was completely successful and during his next obedience training session, Barnes would get a “reward” for murdering over a dozen people. 

“Tony,” Pepper said, her rage seeping out of her and dissipating like steam. She sank down to sit lightly on the edge of his workbench. For years she’d been visiting him in his workshop, chasing him around, haranguing him with questions, handing him things just to annoy him. Never once had she dirtied her clothes with grime or grease, and Tony knew the white Armani dress she was wearing now would be no exception.

He wished he could say it was good to see her. “Why are you here?”  Tony rubbed hard on his face, feeling the stubble prickle beneath his fingers. He needed coffee. It would solve exactly three of his 2,847 problems right then: his headache, his exhaustion, and the fact that he had nowhere to look but at Pepper’s irritatingly knowing expression.

“I’ve only called you a dozen times,” Pepper said, a bit of her customary petulance sneaking into her voice. “I shouldn’t be surprised that the only person you want to talk to is Rhodey.”

Of course Pepper had gone to visit him in the hospital. He put two and two together. “He told you about Siberia?” he asked as he stood and walked over to the kitchenette to brew himself a pot of coffee. 

“Yes,” she said carefully, following him. “And… Steve called. He said--”

“I don’t care what he said,” Tony spat, cutting her off. “He called you? What number did he use? Did you trace it?”

“No I didn’t trace it,” Pepper said, her eyes narrowing in irritation. “I didn’t want to and I didn’t need to. Ross has that covered, I’m sure. He got a subpoena, which is what phone call numbers 3 and 4 were about. He has people monitoring all communications to and from you, me, Rhodey, everyone involved with the Avengers. And since almost everyone involved with the Avengers is on your payroll, they went ahead and threw the vast majority of Stark Industries into the pot. They are either being very thorough or they are very determined to annoy me.”

“Ross doesn’t want to annoy you, he wants to annoy me,” he said dismissively, turning to scoop some coffee grounds.

“Well, he’s annoying me anyway.”

“That’s because he knows you’ll annoy me for him.” He tried to give her a smile, but it felt brittle.

“There’s more,” Pepper said. “Ross tried to get another subpoena, hence phonecalls six, seven, and nine. He wanted data and specs on everything involved with the mess in Germany and anything Steve could be using to help him hide. We’re talking quinjets, your suit, the alterations you made to the Falcon pack, the arc-reactor, your analysis data on Vision, Friday, anything from SHIELD, whether it’s yours or your father’s…”

Tony snorted and set the pot to brew. Leave it to Ross to take advantage of the situation and use his agenda to grab all the Stark tech he could get his hands on. He wasn’t entirely surprised. After all, idiots trying to steal his technology was how he became Iron Man in the first place. “Since they haven’t come kicking down my door yet, I’m assuming you stopped them.”

“SI’s army of lawyers stopped them,” Pepper said. “You signed the Accords, which means Iron Man takes no action without the council’s approval. No one’s heard about Siberia, so no one can claim you’ve done anything to violate that agreement, which admittedly would give a judge a compelling reason to grant the subpoena. Regardless of Iron Man and his actions, Tony Stark’s tech and designs are private property and protected by patents.”

“Clever.”

“Luckily your showdown with Senator Stern a few years ago provided a precedent,” Pepper said.

“Also lucky that the last asshat who tried to take my suit ended up being secret Hydra,” Tony said. “Bet Ross didn’t like that comparison. Nice work, Potts.”

“How is any of this news to you?” Pepper asked. “Has Ross not called you? He’s only called me about 17 million times.”

“He’s called,” Tony said. “I just always put him on hold until he gets frustrated and hangs up.”

“Why do you put him on hold, exactly?” Pepper asked. “Is it because you want to annoy him, or because you would rather spend time digging through decades-old intel on the Winter Soldier?”

He gave her a shrug. “Bit of both.”

Pepper sighed heavily. “Why, Tony?” she asked, pointing at the screen where the latest Winter Soldier report was still displayed. “Why are you doing this? There are people who need you. Real-life,  _ alive  _ people--your friends, your employees, your company--they need your help, and you’ve locked yourself away in here to do what, exactly? To prove to the world that the Winter Soldier has killed a lot of people? The world knows that already, Tony. You’re no good to anyone down here, brooding and plotting revenge--”

“I need to understand,” he said, cutting her off. His voice dropped to a rough whisper like it did when he was about to lose the battle against tears. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I need to understand how this happened.” He went back to his screen, flipped it so Pepper could see, and scrolled down to a picture that was attached. It was a rare photo that wasn’t of the Winter Soldier, but of his victims. “ _ Acceptable collateral damage _ ,” Tony said, pointing. “British Ambassador Dalton James had been at a birthday party when the Winter Soldier rolled through and killed everyone there. Thirteen people, including James’s nine year old son. This isn’t the only time. But all those people-- _ my parents-- _ are summed up in three words:  _ acceptable collateral damage. _ ”

He turned on the spot, mostly because to sit still beneath Pepper’s fixed stare was to wither away, but also because he was beginning to feel like he couldn’t breathe and he thought moving might help. His workshop looked strange to him somehow. He’d been so focused on other things for so long, he couldn’t remember if everything was exactly where he left it. “At some point, something must’ve happened, you know, something that made killing innocent people easier than enduring whatever the hell Hydra was doing to him. I want to know what that was. I want to see the moment. I need to understand.”

“You should already understand,” Pepper said sadly. 

“What?”

“I know you, Tony, and you should already understand,” she repeated. “Given what I saw when I walked in, and given what you told me about--”

“Get out.” He turned away abruptly and made his way back to the kitchenette where enough coffee had seeped into the pot to fill his cup.

“Tony--”

“You’re the one who said we needed space, needed a break, and now you come barging into my compound? Now you won’t leave me alone?” He said this facing the wall. He couldn’t stand to look at her face, wanted to hide, wanted to climb into a suit and shield himself, but his closest suit was across the room and somewhere in the back of his mind he thought it’d be childish to call it all the way over just to protect him from  _ Pepper _ . Not for the first time, he wished Bleeding Edge was ready. 

Behind him, Pepper sighed. “Can I at least grab a quote, something to put in a press release or feed to the board?”

“Make something up,” Tony said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Something I would say, since you know me so damn well.”

“Since I know you so damn well, I think I’ll avoid telling them anything you would say,” she said. 

Tony took his time putting sugar in his coffee, waiting until the click of Pepper’s heels faded away and the glass door swung shut behind her. He wasn’t exactly sure he could count that interaction as a win. His chest felt strange, hot and tight like it had the night Stane had ripped out his arc reactor. He rubbed his scar through his t-shirt and carried his coffee over to his chair. Dealing with real world problems wasn’t something he felt willing or capable of dealing with. Instead, he reopened the last video he’d been watching, forwarded it to the last section he’d seen, and hit play. 

“I want to suck your cock,” Barnes said, his voice dead even as Vassiliev continued to pound into him at a brutal pace, and once again Tony felt a flash of victory.

Zakharov let go of Barnes’s face and backhanded him, his hand connecting with Barnes’s cheek with a loud crack. Vassiliev chose that moment to move one of his hands from Barnes’s hips to his human shoulder for better leverage. “You are not in charge. You don’t give orders. You have to beg, and if you beg pretty enough, maybe I’ll give you what you want.”

If Barnes was surprised by this deviation from routine, he didn’t show it. He turned his face forward again, his expression and eyes eerily blank like they had been in Berlin, and asked, “May I suck your cock?” 

“I don’t know…” Zakharov said. Vassiliev dragged his fingernails down Barnes’s back, thin streaks of blood welling black in the colorless video. “It doesn’t sound like you really want it…” He stood and turned away, reaching for something off-screen.

“Please!” Barnes gasped, and for the first time Tony heard desperation in his voice. “May I please suck your cock, sir, please--” 

Whatever Zakharov had planned or threatened to do had frightened Barnes enough to elicit a rare spurt of emotion. He turned back to Barnes, grabbed a handful of his hair again, and jerked his head back, forcing him to bend his neck to an uncomfortable angle and look up at him. “You’re not doing a very good job convincing me, boy.”

“I need it, sir, please,” Barnes begged as Vassiliev moaned behind him, his thrusts losing their rhythm and devolving into mindless rutting. “I need to feel how big it is in my mouth, need to choke on it. I need you to come so hard I’ll be tasting you for days, please sir--”

Something in Tony’s chest sank, and the tiny victory withered and died as Zakharov returned to his knees in front of Barnes and pulled out his cock. “What other cocks have you been sucking, huh?” he asked as he twisted both of his hands into Barnes’s hair and thrust into his mouth. “We didn’t teach you to beg like that.”

The others laughed.

“Tell me, Soldier, who has a bigger cock, me or Captain America?” Zakharov asked as he fucked Barnes's face, and they all laughed again. 

Behind Barnes, Vassiliev came with a quiet moan and pulled back, panting. As he stood and pulled up his pants, Zakharov thrust deep into Barnes’s mouth and held himself there for a long moment. “Your mission today was a success, Soldier,” he said, stroking Barnes’s face almost lovingly even as he choked on his cock. He didn’t try to pull away, though. He never pulled away. Tony caught sight of the metal arm and wondered why Barnes never fought back. He could slaughter every single one of these assholes without breaking a sweat. Why didn’t he? Why did he never even try? 

“Hydra honors success and loyalty.” Finally Zakharov pulled out and Barnes coughed, gasping for air. “On your back, boy. Uspensky has your reward.” Tony could hear the smile in his voice as Barnes rolled over to lie on his back, his cock limp and utterly uninterested. He could see the wicked grin on Uspensky’s face as she stepped forward and pulled her shirt off over her head. 

In fact, Barnes seemed to be the only one who wasn’t smiling. 

Tony stopped the video and closed the display, feeling more than a little sick. He stared blankly across his shop for a long moment, trying to ignore the phantom hands sliding up and down his body. Time for sleep, he thought, because it was the only thing he was capable of thinking at the moment. Everything else was too complicated or too painful. So he’d go to bed, but not before taking a sleeping pill or four, just to make sure he wouldn’t have any dreams. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooooookkaaay, so that update took way longer than expected, but this chapter is the longest yet, so hopefully that makes up for it?? I'm so sorry!! If I ever go too long between updates, please just bug me about it! 
> 
> Thanks for being patient and for all the kudos and comments! :)


	5. Furnace

Rhodey was being released from Washington General at eight o’clock that morning, so in true Stark fashion, Tony’s helicopter landed at ten. What was he supposed to do, make Rhodes ride back to the Avengers compound in a _car_? That’d take hours. Besides, he didn’t think he had a car with enough legroom to make the trip comfortable for Rhodey’s jigsaw puzzle of a spine. Whenever he’d bought a new car, Rhodey had always complained about the legroom, no matter how much money he had spent on a damn fine machine. Tony had always claimed he was looking for things other than legroom. Rhodey had always claimed he was compensating for something.

That was what made James Rhodes the best friend Tony could ever hope to have; he was completely unimpressed with power.

It was a great trait to have in a friend, and a not-so-great one to have in an enemy. When he was younger, he would laugh at the people who underestimated him, and then he would blow them away. The Ten Rings had underestimated him, and he’d burnt them to the ground. Vanko had thought he could take Tony down with _drones_ of all things. Steve had underestimated him, and all he had to do to set the record straight was carry a nuke on his back through a wormhole. Lately, however, between the Mandarin and Ultron, being underestimated hadn’t been so funny.

Maybe he was starting to wonder if they were right.

Ross didn’t underestimate him, but he wasn’t impressed either. He officially gave zero fucks about Tony Stark and how much havoc he could wreak with all his technology and money. Technically, they were on the same side, which meant Tony shouldn’t care whether Ross was impressed or not, intimidated or not. But he did care, because the further he waded into this situation with the Accords, the more Secretary Ross began to look like an enemy.

That was the thought that crossed his mind as he looked up from his phone and saw Ross striding through the hospital entrance and making a beeline for him. To kill time, Tony had been reading another Winter Soldier mission report Friday had sent to his phone. He might have arrived fashionably late, but in keeping with proud medical tradition, Rhodey’s release was now four hours behind schedule, and Tony had to wonder how much of that had been orchestrated by Ross simply to make this meeting possible. He slid his phone into his pocket and looked over the top of his sunglasses at the towering Secretary of State.

“Mr. Secretary,” he said. “I’d shake your hand, but I’m afraid I’d catch something bureaucratic.”

“You might catch some common sense,” Ross said, unbuttoning his suit jacket and sitting down beside him. “Anyone with an ounce of it would expect someone like you to answer the phone when I call.”

“I answer.”

“And then put me on hold.”

“I told you I like to watch the light blink. It’s soothing, puts me right to sleep. Don’t you like the hold music? It’s what I listen to when I work out--”

“Stark.” Ross cut him off. “We need to talk.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is that not what we’re doing?”

“You have intel on Steve Rogers and James Barnes,” Ross said, unflappable in the face of Tony’s glib snarkiness. “It would be in your best interests to share it with me.”

“Rogers: Tall. Blond. Superhuman. Rides around on a high horse that he feeds with his own self-righteousness. Barnes: Tall-ish. Metal arm. Fabulous hair. Occasionally goes off the deep-end and can murder a dozen of your best agents without breaking a sweat. That intel?” Tony asked. “I don’t understand, how do you not know this?”

“Not that intel,” Ross said, pulling his own phone from his pocket. “This intel.”

He read aloud.

 

_Mission Report: WINTER SOLDIER_

_Algeria, 1 April 1956_

_Objective: French Defense Minister Jaques Dupuy_

_Target eliminated with prejudice. Algerian Nationalist Movement implicated--_

 

“Where did you get that?” Tony asked, letting out a breath he hadn’t even known he’d been holding. Thank God he had a supreme pokerface, otherwise Ross wouldn't only have the upper hand, he'd know it too.

“That file was sent to your phone at 10:48 this morning. I have a subpoena for all communications to and from over a hundred Stark Industries employees, including you. Didn’t someone send you a memo?”

They probably had, and Pepper had told him about it in person. What he was having trouble with was the fact that it was Friday who sent the file to his phone. She may have been the most advanced computer on the planet, but she was just that, a computer, and sending that file to his phone was less of a communication and more of a transfer of information, like downloading something from the cloud. That told Tony two things. First, Ross had eyes on SI that he shouldn’t have, and second, Ross couldn’t do anything with what he’d already found, otherwise this conversation wouldn’t be happening.

“I have more,” Ross said, putting his phone away again. “Specifically a video from 2008 that will be leaked online if you don’t hand over every piece of information you have on Captain America and the Winter Soldier in the next 24 hours.”

Tony hadn’t seen anything from 2008 yet. He was still working his way through the 50s and 60s, with 1945 making an occasional appearance. Given the latest videos he’d seen, this one couldn’t be anything good. Barnes was in the top five on Tony's list of people he hated, but making those videos public was an option he’d already taken off the table. It was just too much of a dick move.

Which was why he wasn’t entirely surprised Ross was threatening to do it.

“I’m sorry,” Tony said. “Maybe I’m being stupid--as impossible as that is--but what use could 60 year old intel be to you?”

“What the United States government chooses to do with classified intelligence is only your business if I decide to make it so.”

“And let me guess, you’re not playing your Jean-Luc Picard card today.”

“Not unless you play ball with us.” Ross stood, buttoning his jacket. “I don’t want to leak the video--”

“Right, just like you don’t want to blackmail me,” Tony interrupted.

“--but I will if you force my hand.” He strode away, his hands in his pockets, and called back over his shoulder, “Twenty-four hours, Stark. Try to handle this deadline better than the last.”

Tony watched him go, trying to think of a witty comeback. He was determined to outlive God trying to have the last word, surely he could come up with something for Ross, but any possibilities died on his tongue as a nurse appeared, pushing Rhodes in a wheelchair.

That was the first time Tony truly understood that Rhodey wouldn’t be walking out of there on his own two feet, that he might never walk again. He’d known it, of course, every doctor he'd spoken to had told him the same thing, but hearing it and seeing it were two entirely different experiences. Rather than wallow in that particular pit of despair, Tony gave the male nurse pushing the wheelchair a glance and asked, “What, they didn’t even give you a hot nurse?” The man glared at him as he moved to the side and let Tony take his place. “I thought this was supposed to be one of the best hospitals in the nation.”

“All that time to think, and that’s the best one-liner you could come up with?” Rhodey said. “It isn’t even a one-liner, Tony. That was two lines.”

Tony shrugged. “I was distracted.”

“Distracted from trying to prove how clever you are? I find that hard to believe.”

“How about I prove how rich I am instead? The chopper’s been waiting for hours.”

“I’ve been in a helicopter before, Tony, it’s not that big a deal,” Rhodey said as Tony pushed him out the doors.

“Owning your own is a big deal.”

“No, it’s not,” Rhodey said. “Surviving a helo crash, now _that’s_ a big deal.”

“You know what’s a big deal? Flying a nuke through a wormhole to save New York from an alien invasion.”

“Oh, did that happen?” Rhodey asked. “You should have said something. You’ve never mentioned that before.”

“No?”

“Not once,” Rhodey said. “I get it though, bragging about being heroic isn’t very heroic. I can understand why you might want to keep that one under wraps.”

Tony could have thought of a comeback--he really could have--but he chose to smile at him instead.

*

Once they got back to the Avengers compound, Tony showed Rhodey the new suite he’d set up for him (fully wheelchair friendly) and introduced him to the physical therapy team he’d hired (lead therapist was a professor from the University of Delaware who had taken a sabbatical after Tony offered her an insane amount of money), and that seemed to be about all Rhodes could handle before he needed a nap. Tony compared him to a grumpy toddler with all the gruff affection he could muster and then showed him how to use the call system in case he needed help. Then, because he knew Rhodey well enough to know he would never willingly ask for help, he told Friday to keep an eye on him and alert the medical staff if there was an issue.

Once he was alone and back in his workshop, it was easy to fall back into the routine he’d fallen into over the past few weeks: coffee pot on, holographic displays up, new Winter Soldier report to read from another random year.

 

_Report--_

_Codename: Winter Soldier_

_Project Notes, 11 October 1945_

_After many weeks of effort, I am disappointed to report we have made little progress on our American project. Pain and physical discomfort affect the subject, but sadly not to the extent we expected, or in the way we want. His greatest cause of distress has been the loss of his arm. However, we can neither purposefully mutilate him nor threaten to do so in order to achieve our goal. If he sustains further major injuries he will cease to be a valuable potential asset. Furthermore, he is clever enough to know this, rendering any threats useless._

_While our friends in Department X continue to develop and experiment with their mental implantation process, we have been forced to resort to more barbaric methods. The subject has withstood our most rigorous interrogation and indoctrination techniques, but at great cost to his physical health. If corporal punishment and pain-centered cognitive recalibration continue at this rate, I predict the damage done to codename: Winter Soldier will kill him before we achieve the desired mental state. An alternative method of coercion is needed._

 

Tony knew exactly what _alternative method_ they had chosen. The analytical part of his brain even understood why they had chosen it. Sexual violence had all the emotional distress of traditional torture for a fraction of the physical damage. It was effective, efficient, and exactly what Hydra needed to bring Barnes to his knees, both figuratively and literally.

In less than twenty-four hours, it might be exactly what Ross needs to force Steve and Barnes out of hiding.

“Friday, I need all video files from 2008,” he said, exiting out of the report. Odds were, Ross's video was something like the dozens he'd seen of Barnes with Zakharov and the others. There was't anything he could do about that. But there was a chance it would be more like the video he'd seen of his parents--one staring the Winter Soldier and his victims instead of Barnes and his captors. He might be able to do damage control on that one, and if that was the case he needed to get ahead of whatever this situation was.

There was a long pause as Friday searched. “I don’t have any files from 2008.”

“Look again.”

“I don’t need to, boss. Hydra took the Winter Soldier out of cryo in 2006 for a mission in Odessa. When he was finished, they put him back in cryo, and that’s the last data entry I have for him until 2014.”

“So something was deleted.”

“Or never stored in Siberia in the first place.”

“Well, whatever it is, Ross expects it to be a bombshell. Search SHIELD files--all deaths and events of note in 2008. We gotta see if we can spot the Winter Soldier’s fingerprints on anything.”

Articles and files appeared on his displays, flicking up like a deck of cards in shuffle, and he began to skim. A German economist, a prominent member of the Bonanno crime family, and an investigative journalist were all murdered within nine days of each other. A bombing in Tanzania killed 49 people and was never claimed by any of the usual suspects. A plane crashed mysteriously over the Canadian wilderness--SHIELD had recovered the black box and never told any other agency about it. Sadly, he needed Nick-Fury-level clearance to see what the black box had recorded. A shipping container left the Port of Los Angeles and never arrived in Tokyo, disappearing somewhere in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

After over an hour of reading and disappointment, he asked, “Anything else?”

“You were kidnapped by the Ten Rings in 2008.”

As if he’d forget about that. “I meant anything else _important_ ,” Tony said with a roll of his eyes. That was one thing he was completely sure the Winter Soldier had had nothing to do with. The Ten Rings weren’t Hydra. They weren’t even in Hydra’s ballpark, let alone high enough on the Evil Asshole Foodchain to strike up a partnership with them.

Besides, that whole mess had been orchestrated by Obadiah Stane, and one of the first things Tony had done after he got his hands on SHIELD's database was search for any intel on him. He hadn’t been Hydra, just a dick. A murderous, treasonous dick.

“Keep searching,” Tony said, closing his current window and pulling up some schematics instead. “Let me know if you find anything.”

He looked at the leg-braces he’d designed to help Rhodey with his physical therapy. He’d thought through everything--materials, range of movement, binding, stability--and looking the schematics over one more time didn’t show him anything new. He’d just have to let Rhodey try them out and then adjust them accordingly.

That seemed to be the name of the game lately--wait and see, react, improvise where needed. Ross’s video leak was a prime example. What, exactly, would he do if he managed to find the intel before blew up the internet? The only way to stop Ross from leaking it was to make the situation worse and hand over the Winter Soldier files. The betrayal would be less public, but more thorough and extensively more damning. The lesser of the two evils really seemed to be letting Ross release the video, and Jesus H. Christ, that was not a conversation he was looking forward to having with the long line of people waiting to tell him what a terrible person he was. At this point, all he could do was wait and react, perform damage control once things fell apart.

Despite his astounding ability to improvise, he really wasn’t looking forward to that particular challenge.

After all, if the recent past was anything to go by, he was sure he’d burn that bridge when he got to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, crazy long wait because I suck :/ I said this last time, but I'll say it again: hopefully the wait for the next chapter won't be so long! I already have part of it written, so maybe that will help?
> 
> Thanks again for all your interest and support!
> 
> (ps--If you're an Iron Man fan and haven't read The Five Nightmares yet, GET ON THAT because I finally got around to it last week and it's awesome!)


	6. Nine

Somewhere a phone was ringing. 

The annoyance Tony felt at that sleepy realization was multi-faceted. First, the ringing was the old-fashioned bell noise, the one that nearly made his ears bleed, the one that Steve had used for ages until Clint had finally lifted his phone off him and handed it over to Tony so he could permanently disable the speakers.

Second, he had deliberately disconnected all forms of communication in and out of his bedroom. That he missed something was supremely annoying. The process had included jumping over Friday's code to lock her out of the surveillance and comm systems. His phone had been easier; he'd simply turned it off. He didn't need to worry about Rhodey--he had a whole compound full of people to keep him company and an entire team of doctors dedicated solely to his health and recovery. Tony could ignore him for a few hours and not have it weigh too heavily on his conscience. There was no one else in the compound he worried about.

The people outside the compound were a different story...

He'd already ignored one call today from Ross. Friday had said something about a breach at the Raft. He gave absolutely zero fucks about that, so there wasn't much he could or would do. Correction--he gave plenty of fucks, just not the kind Ross was looking for. Clint and the others broke out of jail? Good. He would have given them a get out of jail free card himself, if he'd been able to figure out a way to do it and not end up in prison alongside them.

But the breakout wasn't why he'd collapsed onto his bed after showing Rhodey his new leg braces. Neither was the touching yet supremely irritating package from Steve. Seriously, couldn't the guy just refrain from apologizing and let Tony feel furious and betrayed in peace? Couldn't he just hate Tony for trying to kill his best friend? Just for a little while, so the feeling would be mutual and Tony wasn't left looking like an asshole? Anger was something that needed to be felt, to be experienced. There was no catharsis otherwise. Steve always seemed to jump right to acceptance--yet another way Tony was unable to measure up. The guy had even sent a phone in case he ever needed--

Right. Damn phone was still ringing.

Tony rolled over and, unable to peel his eyelids back, felt blindly around in his nightstand for the infuriating device. Finally he found it, flipped it open, held it to his ear, and grunted in greeting.

“Tony.” It was Steve’s voice.

It wasn't until then that Tony truly put it together. He'd thought he'd taken care of all his communications. Well, he had, minus the little flip phone Steve had sent via FedEx. 

“Look, I don’t have long," Steve continued. "I was just calling to see if you’re okay.”

Tony rolled over and blinked dumbly at the ceiling.

“Stupid question, I know, but I… are you still there?” Steve asked. 

“Yeah, I’m just…” He rubbed his face with his free hand in an effort to wake up. “...trying to figure out if I’m dreaming.”

There was a long pause on Steve’s end of the line. “You were asleep?”

“Yeah, we lowly humans tend to need regular amounts of shut-eye.” ‘Regular’ was a bit rich. His sleep schedule was anything but regular.

“How long have you been asleep for?”

“I don’t know, what time is it?”

“Where you are? Six p.m.”

“What day?” Once he’d stayed awake for 72 hours straight and then slept for almost thirty. He’d been very confused when he’d gone to bed on a Saturday and woke up on Monday. Another time he’d been awake for an insanely long amount of time, fallen asleep at around eight in the morning, woken up at nine, and thought it was the next day when in reality he’d only been asleep for about an hour. Time was funny sometimes, and not just in the  _ it’s a only a mental construct _ kind of way. 

“Thursday.”

“Mm. Eight hours, then.” Ross’s deadline had passed as he slept, exactly as he’d planned. Whatever video Ross had been threatening to leak online was most likely already posted, might have even gone viral by now, depending on where he put it. That was probably the point of this phone call, and no, Tony wasn’t looking forward to explaining to Steve why it simultaneously was and wasn’t his fault that the entire world could now jump on PornHub and watch his friend be raped.

“Tony…” Steve sighed. “You need to turn on the news.”

He didn’t sound angry. He didn’t even sound disappointed, which was far more common. He sounded… sad?

That observation alone made him sick with dread. He stumbled out of bed and started fiddling with the wires he’d unplugged and the switches he’d turned off in his attempt at isolation. Even as he worked, he kept the phone pinned to his left ear with his shoulder. “Look, I know this is bad, but trust me, this was the lesser of two evils.”

“What are you talking about?”

“And I know that when faced with a choice between two evils, you’d rather make your own, third option, but there was no third option to make. If there had been, I would have thought of it.”

On his end of the line, Steve was silent. Tony should have closed the phone, ended the call, destroyed the illusion that he wasn’t alone the moment he finally got the holographic display turned back on. It popped up, showing the last thing he’d been reading before he fell asleep:

 

_ Mission Report: WINTER SOLDIER _

_ Paris, 12 May 1956 _

_ Objective: Algerian Peace Conference Envoy _

_ All targets eliminated. _

 

He closed that window and pulled up the news. He didn’t need to look long.

_ "--still no comment from Stark Industries regarding these shocking revelations. However, sources inside SI's legal department tell us a request has been filed on behalf of Tony Stark for major search engines such as Google to not fulfill search requests regarding the video that was leaked online earlier today. Such requests take time and regardless, the eighty minute video has already gone viral--" _

The blonde news anchor did her best to appear serious and even sympathetic, but if there was one thing Tony had learned during his years as a billionaire, it was how to read people, (that and calculus). Journalists never gave a damn what the news was, as long as they were the ones to break it.

And this was a news story that would break the internet, would probably break Tony too, if he let it. Somewhere, Steve's faint voice was speaking. Tony hung up, too busy reading the headline to care: SHOCKING VIDEO--TONY STARK TORTURED BY TEN RINGS

He had Friday reinstated before he fully knew what he was doing.

"Where have you been?" her voice came through the speakers, her anger and worry making her accent even more pronounced. "I've been trying to reach you for hours--"

"I've been sleeping," Tony said. "Never mind, it doesn't matter. I need you to pull the video up for me. You know which one."

Friday hesitated. "Do you need the original?"

Copies. Of course there were copies, downloads, remixes. He was probably a freaking meme by now. "No. I know who leaked it."

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, boss?” Friday asked. “You have--”

“Don’t tell me how many missed calls and messages I have, I’m sure there are hundreds,” he said, even as the phone in his hand began to ring again. He clicked ignore. “Just pull up the video.”

It took her barely three seconds to find it. 

It started with a flicker and a violent screen shake, then a swarthy face came into focus. The man scowled at the camera as he checked to see if it was recording, and then he swung it around to show the room. Even after eight years, it was a familiar sight to Tony-- rough hewn, stone walls, minimal, over-used furniture consisting of a table and a few chairs, and of course, a metal tub in the far corner.

He felt sick to his stomach at the sight of the room. He hadn't eaten in awhile and therefore had nothing to throw up, but if he wasn't careful, he'd end up dry heaving all over the place. It was fine, he could do this, he thought, stubbornly ignoring the way his ears had gone numb and everything started to sound and feel like it was very far away. The visual was bad enough, but it was the audio that really got to him, the splashing water, the shouting, his own screams and gasps for air.

"Boss, I really don't think--"

"Mute."

The sounds of Friday and the video cut out, leaving him with nothing but the sound of his own breath in his ears and the obnoxious ringing of the phone in his hand. He ignored the call and focused on the video. He was fine, he reminded himself again, he just needed to see exactly which day this was, needed to know exactly what the world had just discovered and then he could stop.

The first twelve minutes were exactly what he expected: two men gripping his shoulders, shoving him face first into the tub and holding them there. The thrashed and struggled as their grip tightened enough to leave bruises, and on the rare occasion they let him up to breathe, there was a third man shouting broken English in his face, demanding he make them a missile. 

That had happened for three straight days. On the first day, after what had to have been nearly an hour of what he liked to call "aggressive bathtime", he'd woken up on the dirt floor to one of the men giving him CPR. That must have been an unpleasant experience all around, because after that, they'd stopped the daily sessions after he passed out. 

The idea for the arc reactor came to him as he was in the water--the wires connecting him to the car battery kept tugging and slipping as he struggled. Once or twice a nasty shock tore through him. Even as most of him was trying to breathe, a small part of his brain was working, as it always did, on solving the larger problem. He needed a better method of stopping the shrapnel from ripping his heart to shreds. And this particular problem worked the way most of his problems did. Put it on the back burner long enough, and eventually a rough outline come to mind, nothing more than an image that was entirely lacking all of the calculations and planning required to make it feasible. But the image had always been enough to start with, and the image of the arc reactor is what came to mind as he choked on freezing, rancid water in a cave in Afghanistan.

Three days of nearly drowning was all it had taken for him to come up with the greatest advancement in energy technology in fifty years; day four was different.

And, as Tony watched the terrorists pull him from the water and drag him across the room, he realized that this video was day four. Of course it was. What did he expect? That his luck would take a sudden and massive upturn?

He watched himself try to get his feet under him, wet hair sticking to his head, angry red wounds and black wires peaking out from beneath his shirt. He remembered that clearly--trying to walk, hating when they shoved and pulled him down the snaking tunnels of their hideout. It was humiliating, not being able to stay on his feet, and the fact that they enjoyed pushing him around like bullies on the playground made it sting that much more.

Perspective was a hell of a thing, though, and the Tony in the video was about to get a not-so-healthy dose. He watched just long enough to make sure--just enough to watch them bend him over the table and tie him down. There was still 66:13 left, but he knew what happened. His hands were barely shaking when he closed the video, and he was dimly proud of that fact.

The suit had been born same way as the arc reactor, but later. Not when they threw him over the table and the first man ripped into him-- at that point all he’d been focused on was the pain, the sheer shock of what was happening, and the stubborn, absolute refusal to give in.  The idea hadn’t dawned until asshole number nine stepped up to take his turn, and all he wanted was for them to stop touching him. At that moment, it was the only thing he could ever remember wanting.

And so the suit had come to him. The problem had simmered in the back of his mind, seasoned again and again by the fact that he was being raped, and then it came in a flash--something to protect him, something to keep their hands off him, to keep any future unplanned explosions from lodging deadly shrapnel in his chest.

That was why he'd built a suit instead of a bomb, or a gun, or a bunch of guns. Hell, he was fairly certain he could have built a tank in that damn cave and the idiots holding him wouldn't have noticed until it was too late. But he'd chosen to build the Mark 1 for a very specific reason. The suit had always been meant to protect him. Any other function was purely secondary.

The moment it came to him, he hadn't seen repulsors or flamethrowers or mini-missiles; all that came later. He'd seen two inches of metal between him and the Ten Rings and, more importantly, a way out. So when he'd gasped and cried out,  _ "All right! I'll do it! I'll do it, just please stop!" _ he hadn't been agreeing. He hadn't broken, not even with rapist number nine still inside him. He'd thought of a way out.

Being stoic and strong, enduring pain and misery without giving an inch was all well and good, very heroic, but sooner or later you'd break. It was all but inevitable. If he'd held out, been characteristically stubborn and held on to his pride, he would have...

He would have been reduced to something like Barnes.

Or, you know, buried in a sand-dune with a bullet in his brain. At the moment it was difficult to tell what would have been worse. 

The flip-phone started ringing again. Tony hesitated for a long moment. Then, numbly realizing he was going to have to do this sooner or later, he answered.

"What do you want?"

"I told you earlier," Steve said, sounding more than a little annoyed. "I just want to make sure you're ok."

"Sure, I'm fine. It's not the first time I've starred in a sex tape that went viral. Of course, this is the first one that's completely blindsided me, but you know, what can you do?" Being flippant and deflective in a time of crisis was his default setting, he couldn't help it. Besides, what could he do about it? Not a damn thing. 

“You didn’t know about the video?” Steve asked.

Tony had to clear his throat before answering. “I didn’t even know they were filming.”

“Why do I feel like you’re lying to me?” He didn't sound angry. In fact, Tony would have bet good money that he had that little half smile on his face like he did every time Tony was endearingly annoying. Strangely, his heart-rate started to decrease and a bit of sensation began to trickle back into his ears and face.

“I really didn’t know they were filming…”

“But you knew there was a video?”

“Yeah," he said. "I just didn’t know I would be the star. I thought… I thought it’d be Barnes.” And how stupid could he be? Friday had even tried to warn him--one of the most important events of 2008 was his own kidnapping, and the one time he tried to make something not all about him, it came back to bite him in the ass.

“Bucky? Why would Ross have a video of Bucky?”

“Because he was Hydra’s favorite leading man. I found a handful of videos myself.”

“Tony…” Steve sighed, and now he did sound a bit angry. If there was anything that would make him feel like things were vaguely normal, it was butting heads with Steve. “Why?”

“I wanted to see if Barnes was responsible for the deaths of any other beloved family members,” he said. “Oh, wait--I forgot. I don’t have any other family to worry about--”

“Yeah? Well, join the club.”

“Ross wanted the files I had on the Winter Soldier," Tony said, ignoring the dig. "I told him no. He said he would release the video if I didn’t. I thought it was a video of Barnes, so I told him hell no.” 

“You chose the lesser of two evils,” Steve said, parroting his own words from earlier. He didn’t sound entirely disapproving.

"You don't know that. Maybe I wanted the world to see Barnes for what he really is."

"If you wanted that, you would have released the videos yourself," Steve said.

Tony decided to skip over that particular observation and the all the things it implied about his character. “Ross needed a big news story,” he continued, and now his brain was running again, working the problem before him. “Something sufficiently shocking to help hide the fact that four enhanced people just broke out of his very own version of Azkaban.”

“Azkaban?”

“It’s… never mind." Tony pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, disproportionately annoyed that Steve didn't remember the weekend they'd spent marathoning Harry Potter at Wanda's request. "The point is, it doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?”

“No. It’s out. It’s done, everyone knows. I only worry about the things I can control.”

“Tony, you try to control everything.”

“Ross made a mistake,” he said, his voice rising, frustrated that Steve couldn’t see what was going on. “He swung too early and didn’t get the home-run he needed. He threatened me. When I didn’t back down, he followed through with it because he had to. He played his trump card, and all that managed to do was piss me off and make him an enemy of one of the richest, most powerful men in the world.” Even as he said the words, he felt better. Ross was going down, it was only a matter of time.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said. He couldn't see the destination yet, but he could see the road, and that was something. "I’ll put it on the back burner, let it simmer. Something will come to me eventually. In the meantime, I’ll just be my irritating self.”

“Honestly, that will probably be more than enough," Steve said. “You know, if you need help, all you have to do is--”

“You already have one damsel in distress,” he interrupted. “You don’t need another.”

“Yeah, well, you know how I like to stay busy.”

“I gotta go. Pepper’s probably having an aneurysm by now.”

“All right, but I’m serious Tony, let me know if--”

He hung up. Heartfelt goodbyes weren’t really his style. “Unmute,” he said, releasing Friday from her prison of silence. 

“I really wish you’d stop doing that,” she said.

“Yeah, well,  _ if wishes and buts were candy and nuts _ … you know how it goes.”

“Colonel Rhodes has been sitting in his wheelchair outside your quarters for an hour and a half,” Friday said. “Can I let him in? Or should I tell him you’re having an emotional breakdown?”

“Emotional breakdown? C’mon! I have a manly reputation to protect,” he said. Or at least, he used to. Odds were the video completely and irrevocably destroyed that particular reputation. “What the hell?” he decided. “Let him in. It’s time he saw what I was up to anyway.”

It'd be easy, Tony realized as he saw Rhodey wheel himself into the room, to tell Rhodey everything--the Winter Soldier, Ross, the files, everything. After all, not accepting help from Steve was a matter of pride. Accepting help from Rhodey was as natural as breathing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I suck? But so does my life? And that's why this chapter is so late. At this point, I hope no one is surprised. :( 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for being patient and reading! As always, I'd love to hear what you think!


	7. Benign

Silence had fallen over twenty minutes ago, settling like frost on a cold, wet night. Rhodey sat in his wheelchair in front of the holographic display, a smattering of Winter Soldier files before him: pictures, reports, the strange machine specs Tony had stumbled across a few days ago. Tony had told him everything--or at least, everything he hadn't already known. The files, Ross's ultimatum. He didn't say anything about what had happened to him in Afghanistan--Rhodey had already seen that in vivid detail, he was sure--and to Tony's relief, he didn't bring it up. 

After that, he'd let Rhodes skim through the files. He didn't say a word when he discovered exactly what kind of "alternative methods" Hydra had used on Barnes, and he didn't flinch at the Winter Soldier's body count. Eventually, he stumbled upon a report Tony hadn't seen yet. He read over Rhodey's shoulder.   


  
_ Mission Report: WINTER SOLDIER _

_ Mexico City, 17 February 1957 _

_ Objective: US Colonel Jefferson Hart.  _

_ Target eliminated with prejudice. _

_ Additional Note: _

_ Comrade Zakharov assures us that his obedience training sessions with codename: Winter Soldier continue to improve and show great success. In fact, it has been over two years since there was any irregularity or degree of failure on the part of the Winter Soldier during a mission. Zakharov would like me to note, however, that these sessions are still necessary to maintain complete control over this very useful, yet possibly volatile asset. _

 

There was a video attachment, because of course there was. Tony didn't have luck good enough to get away with not seeing another video. After all, what was a supremely shitty day without seeing multiple brutal rapes?

It was labeled Project: WINTER SOLDIER, Session #1042, and it showed a familiar scene: a bare room with an old, wooden table and lone chair against the far wall. There must have been a camera, probably on a tripod. Barnes was on his knees in the middle of the room, nude, and Tony could have sworn he saw Barnes shudder. Other than the uncharacteristic shiver, the only abnormal thing about the scene was that there was only one Hydra agent in room--Zakharov. 

He circled Barnes slowly, letting what Tony imagined to be a cold, hungry gaze roam over him. Once he was behind Barnes, he ran his fingers across his shoulders, lingering on the angry scars where his metal arm met his flesh. Barnes squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head ever so slightly away, and Tony was again struck by how odd it was. Barnes's eyes were still closed by the time Zakharov was standing in front of him again. He finally realized something was off, and grabbed a handful of Barnes's hair, yanking his head back. 

"Look at me, Soldier. I didn't say you could close your eyes."

Barnes followed orders, but even on the low resolution video, Tony could see the eerie, dark blankness that usually ruled his eyes was gone. Now he was confused, afraid, maybe even a little bit angry.

"You can't hide what you do. You can't hide who you are. So why try? Why look away? You need to see."

Zakharov had his back to the camera, but they could hear the sounds of him unbuckling his belt. Before he could get any farther, Rhodey stopped the video.

"No, hang on a sec--" Tony said and reached to click play. Rhodey caught his wrist and stopped him. When Tony looked at his face, all he saw there was disgust.

“You like it? You like watching this stuff?” Rhodey asked.

“Of course not!" Tony said, yanking his hand out of Rhodey's grip. "Give me a little credit here, man.” After days of watching these videos, each with the same sordid content and result, he still had a tiny, strange flare of hope that one of these days Barnes would grow a pair and destroy these assholes. He didn't want to keep watching. He'd seen something, that was all. Something abnormal, something that suggested this session might end differently.

“So you, what, think it’s good?" Rhodey asked. "Think it’s deserved? All this punishment for a guy who hurt so many people--”

“This isn’t about punishment, or justice, or making sure Karma’s scales are balanced!” Tony scoffed.

"Then what’s it about?” He had a strange look on his face, one Tony had never seen before, and he had the chilling realization that his friendship with Rhodey just might depend on his next words. 

“All my life I’ve heard stories, you know?" he said, running a nervous hand through his unruly hair. "Stories about Captain America, the SSR, the Howling Commandos-- Stories about Barnes. My dad liked him a lot. And I always had it in my mind that we were a lot alike, me and this mythical, dead soldier. See, I’ve never been the hero type--general asshole, laundry list of character defects, you know the drill. I could never live up to Captain America and his old-fashioned virtue, his  _ good for the sake of good _ , but Barnes? He drank. He swore. He was the kind of man to have a girl in every port. And yeah, he might have been kind of a dick sometimes, but at his core, he was a good enough person to still be Captain America’s best friend. He wasn’t some superhuman moral paragon. He was just a normal guy who was badass enough to keep up with Captain America. And for preteen me, that was the best I could ever hope for." He stopped and looked at Rhodey again. His expression was now inscrutable.  “When we talked a couple weeks ago in the hospital you said Barnes’s situation was different than mine, and you were right. It was different, but not a lot, and not in a way I understand. I... I just need to understand."

Rhodey had one had over his mouth, like he always did when he was thoughtful and worried, and when Tony looked him in the eye, he saw that damn pity again. "I think I understand."

"Please enlighten me,” Tony said, waving a hand.

"I understand that you found a distraction, and you've latched onto it."

"A distraction?” Tony snorted. “From what?"

"From the Accords, from your fight with Steve, from Ross and his evil dickhead political game. You do this all the time, Tony--"

"No, I don't--"

"Yes, you do,” Rhodey insisted. “Every time something goes wrong, instead of handling it like an adult, you find something else to focus on. Usually it's booze. Sometimes it's sex. Once, it was driving a freaking formula one car. If we're lucky it's a new project--when you came back from Afghanistan, it was the Iron Man suit. After New York, it was, what, forty new Iron Man suits? Things go wrong, and you bury your head in the sand. That's all this is."

"No it's not."

"Yes, it is. There's a video of you being tortured and raped on the internet, and instead of, I don't know, doing something, you're down here looking at reports about people who were murdered decades ago--"

"What exactly do you propose I do? It's out there. Everyone knows. I can't make them all forget. I can't undo any of it, and I sure as hell can't give Ross what he's after, so what do you want me to do?" He was shouting by the time he was done, and Rhodey fell silent. It stretched out, brittle and uncomfortable, until Tony finally took a deep breath and said, "I actually let you in here so you could help me. So, in all seriousness, any ideas?"

"Yeah, one,” Rhodey said gravely. “Talk to Pepper."

Tony shook his head. "I'm not talking to Pepper.”

"Did she know?"

"Yeah,” Tony said, his voice dropping to a rough whisper, and that was why he didn’t think he could face her. He’d known Rhodey for over twenty years. He was his best friend, and he was on a very short list of people who had never given up on him. But he’d never been intimate with Rhodey, and he’d truthfully never wanted to be. He didn’t know what Rhodey sounded like in bed, what he smelled like, how pleasure shivered up and down his body. But he had that with Pepper. He had it with a smattering of women across the globe. And he had it with nine men in a cave in Afghanistan. Most of them were dead now, but the video kept them alive and the memories fresh. And that was why he couldn’t stand to see Pepper right now. It was too… raw. 

To Tony’s undying gratitude, Rhodey let it go. “Look, our only chance is to go after Ross. One of the big questions the media is asking is, where did the video come from? They’re throwing blame all over the place, but Hydra seems to be the favorite scapegoat right now. But Ross was the bastard who leaked the video. You need to prove it.”

“What good will that do?”

“Get his crinkly white ass fired, hopefully,” Rhodey said. “I almost think you should--” He was cut off by his phone ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket and, when he saw who it was, rubbed his temple in annoyance. "It's Pepper." 

Tony took his wheelchair in hand and began pushing him toward the door. 

"What are you doing?" Rhodey asked. "Just because I'm in a wheelchair doesn't mean you get to push me around."

"Please, I've been pushing you around for years," Tony said. 

"Oh, so now you admit it?"

"Poor choice of words," Tony said, and they reached the door. "Talk to Pepper."

"What do you want me to tell her?" he asked. 

"Tell her I'm working on a plan."

"Are you?"

"Sort of."

"Look, Tony, I really think you need to talk to her--"

"If I talk to her, she'll try to make me release a statement or go to a press conference or something else equally nauseating. I need time. I'm not going to the press until I have something on Ross to give them." That was the plan now. Go public--or, more public--face this fiasco and stare it down, but do it triumphantly with a smirk on his face and a match in his hand he could use to burn Ross to the fucking ground. Rhodey raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "You said I like distractions," Tony said. "Well, you just gave me a good one."

"All right, but I'm coming back in an hour, and when I knock, you damn sure better open the door."

"Mm, how about twelve hours?"

"One."

"Eight?"

"One."

"Six?"

"Ok, three, but--" 

Tony opened the door and pushed Rhodey out of it. "Thanks, pal, you're the best."

"I mean it, Tony--"

He shut the door before he could finish. Leaning against it, he took a long, deep breath, letting the jitters he’d been suppressing work themselves out, like electricity jumping and skipping down exposed wires. He had a plan, and if he was as smart as he thought he was, he could pull it off. More importantly, he’d talked to Rhodey. Rhodey, who had seen the video, who knew what the Ten Rings had done to him, had held a relatively normal conversation with him. As far as he was concerned, nothing had changed, and that was what Tony had been worried about--that things would change. That people would treat him differently once they knew. It had happened with Pepper, not in any dramatic way, but he’d seen it in her eyes every once in awhile, a deep, sparkling sadness spiced with pity. He hadn’t been able to stand it. But Rhodey hadn’t looked at him like that, hadn’t treated him any differently. And, Tony realized with a small jolt of surprise, Steve hadn’t, either. 

So, yeah. Not bad. He had billions of dollars, an IQ to rival Stephen Hawking’s, and a truly bad ass suit. He had a friend and a half. He had a plan. 

But first…

He returned to his holographic display and hesitated. One more little distraction couldn’t hurt, could it? There had been something there in the video, something that made him wonder…

He rolled his chair over and clicked play. Barnes was on his knees. Zakharov was unbuckling his belt. Luckily, Zakharov’s body blocked the camera from viewing what was actually happening, but the wet, slurping sounds and the rocking of Zakharov’s hips left little to the imagination. 

“That’s it, good,” Zakharov said, his voice rough and gasping. “Look up at me now, Soldier.” Zakharov was silent for a few minutes, his hips moving smoothly and slowly. The only sounds in the room were the wet sucking sounds and suppressed choking as Barnes did as he was told. With each passing moment, the little flare of hope Tony had felt faded a bit. Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe he'd imagined the shred of defiance he'd seen earlier. 

After a while, Zakharov pulled back, and said, "See, isn't that better? You can't hide, so why try? Life is easier when we know who we are, when we admit our true nature." He pulled Barnes to his feet and took his face in his hands. The tenderness of the gesture made Tony's skin crawl. Barnes didn't pull away, but the tiniest frown line creased his face. "I know who you are. I know what you need. You know it too. Why else would you let me do the things I do?"

Or, to put it in Tony's own words, why didn't Barnes grow a pair and stop him? The similarity between the two ideas made him feel a bit sick.  
In the video, Zakharov pressed a soft kiss to Barnes's lips and then pulled away, saying, "On the table, Soldier." 

Barnes didn't move.

Zakharov turned away to do something, but when he noticed Barnes wasn't following orders, he rounded on him, his voice growing loud and heated. "I said, on the table, soldier!"

Barnes stayed exactly where he was, the hard lines of his shoulders tense and shaking. He didn't move until Zakharov reached for him. It happened in an instant, sudden and silver like a flash of lightning. Barnes's metal hand struck out and connected with Zakharov's face, the sound of the impact as loud as thunder in the small room. The hit was hard enough to send Zakharov flying, and Tony almost cheered out loud as he hit the floor with a thud.  He thought the hit was hard enough to cave in Zakharov's face, certainly hard enough to knock him unconscious, but to his astonishment, the Hydra agent and all around asshole struggled to his feet and frantically shouted something  Tony couldn't quite catch. Dark blood was trickling down his face and onto the floor.

Barnes walked over to him. Despite the fact that he was nude and in many ways completely vulnerable, Tony recognized the confident, single-minded stride as the stride of the Winter Soldier on a mission. His metal hand clenched around Zakharov’s neck, strangling the words that were still escaping. He lifted Zakharov single-handedly over his head and then slammed him back down to the floor where he stayed, motionless and bleeding. 

Barnes stood still for a moment, breathing harshly and admiring his handiwork, but Tony barely had time to wonder what his next move would be, when a harsh, static-filled voice flooded room. 

_ "Longing. Rusted. Seventeen." _

Barnes's whole body flinched and he covered his ears with his hands, trying to stop the sounds of loudspeakers. Tony was simply baffled. Had his translation program glitched?

_ "Daybreak. Furnace. Nine." _

Whatever nonsense this was, it elicited the most intense reaction Tony had seen from Barnes yet. He fell to his knees and slammed his metal hand against the floor, concrete shattering beneath his fist. "No!" Barnes shouted.

_ "Benign. Homecoming." _

"Stop it!" His scream was missing the usual digital manipulation--he was speaking English. In every video he'd seen, Barnes had only spoken a few words, and they had always been in Russian. Zakharov had wanted Barnes to realize who and what he was. Maybe he was getting what he asked for.

_ "One." _

Barnes crumpled in on himself and grabbed two handfuls of his shaggy hair, screaming incoherently at the floor.

_ "Freight car." _

Everything fell silent. Barnes went still. After an impossible long moment, a door opened and a squad of soldiers poured in, each with a rifle in their hand, all trained on Barnes. The nearest one kicked him, forcing him flat on his stomach and planted his boot on the back of Barnes’s neck, the barrel of his gun pressed firmly to the back of his head. There was a lot of shouting, but Tony had seen enough. He closed the window.

Tony had forgotten, for a moment, that he knew how this story ended. He knew what happened. He knew what Barnes had been and what he had done until he went up against Steve above the Potomac. But he forgot, because it was easy to cheer for Barnes, when they were so alike and had so much in common. It was easy to cheer for him because when this video was made, Tony's parents had still been alive. So it felt like a victory that Barnes had finally stood up to Zakharov, that he had finally kicked that bastard's ass. It was just a tiny slice of the revenge Tony had gotten as he burned and shot and stomped his way out of that cave in Afghanistan, but it still counted as a win in his book.

His mind was moving a thousand miles an hour in a thousand different directions, and for an instant, things felt normal. What Rhodey called distraction, Tony called problem solving, and nothing felt as good to him as solving a problem. 

He flicked through the Winter Soldier files, content to focus on Barnes and save Ross for later. After all, if Barnes could beat someone like Zakharov to a bloody pulp, Tony could surely find a way to get Ross fired. The high from Barnes’s defiance lasted for a good fifteen minutes. Then he found the next report.

 

_ Project: WINTER SOLDIER _

_ Scientific Analysis, 24 February 1957 _

_ A comprehensive mental evaluation of Codename: Winter Soldier was conducted over the course of the past week. Diagnoses were varied, but most in Dept. X Science Team believe that his mental state is becoming unstable. In the three years since he was awakened from stasis, it appears his mind is seeking to fill in the holes in his memory, or possibly rebelling against the implanted programming he received originally. The subject has recently begun to exhibit more than usual curiosity, even to the point of questioning orders from superiors, and once in the past month, he attacked a fellow operative, nearly killing him. On interrogation, he could not explain his actions.  _

_ One theory is that, just as he has reflex-memories which allow him to be such an effective operative, he may also have a deeply buried sense of who he was, or at least of what kind of person he was. As such, this deeply buried idea may be causing him mental stress and triggering turmoil in his thoughts. Another theory, which is more disturbing, is that he may actually be remembering his previous life, though in small pieces only. It is therefore our recommendation that Codename: Winter Soldier be kept in stasis between missions, and that he undergo mental implantation at every awakening. We believe this will correct his instability issues, so he can continue to be of use to Hydra and our friends in Department X.  _

“Friday?” Tony asked, feeling as though his chest was deflating.

“Yes, boss?” she asked.

“Start searching the Winter Soldier files, I want anything you can find on brainwashing. Keywords: mental implantation, trigger words, compliance.” Suddenly, he was more interested in the nonsense words than in Barnes’s defiance. Breaking someone through pain and torment was one thing. It had happened to plenty of people and POWs around the world and throughout history. But brainwashing and trigger words? These were things he had thought were limited to science fiction movies and cheesy comic books. Yet he couldn’t ignore the evidence in the files. And when he thought back, the answer seemed embarrassingly obvious. How many times had he read the words  _ mental implantation _ in the files and thought nothing of it? How many times had he interpreted Barnes’s compliance as a simple desire to not be hurt anymore?

“You sure you don’t want me searching for a way to help you crucify Ross?” Friday asked.

“You were listening to that?”

“Of course. What use is an AI assistant if she can’t eavesdrop on all your conversations?”

That got a laugh out of him, even if he didn’t really feel it. “Sorry sweetheart, but spying doesn’t keep you from being spied on. Ross has eyes on you. I’ll find something on him, I’ll just need to find it myself.”

“If you need any nails, let me know. Until then, I’ll focus on the Winter Soldier,” Friday said. “Usually I can guess, but this time I’ve got to ask--what’s your plan, here, boss?”

“Well,” Tony said thoughtfully, glancing over the searched files that started to appear on his display. To his surprise, the first thing that popped up were the schematics of the odd machine he’d been seeing for a while now. “If Hydra was able to brainwash Barnes into the Winter Soldier, maybe I can brainwash the Winter Soldier out of him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, boy, I'm not sure how I feel about any of that. It's late, but I wanted to get this posted, so I'm sorry for any mistakes... But, hey, look, an update! :) I know it’s been a ridiculously long time since the last one, and I’m sorry. I know that makes a fic hard to read. Thanks for sticking around!


	8. Homecoming

_Project: WINTER SOLDIER_

_Incident Report, 12 March 1973_

_I regret to report that after more than fifteen years of selective use around the world, all to great success, last month’s Winter Soldier mission into the United States did not go as planned._

_The target, Senator Harry Baxtor, was eliminated, and the death was made to appear accidental. But after that, something went wrong. Codename: Winter Soldier failed to appear at his extraction point. His handlers waited and listened in to police transmissions, but he did not arrive, and the local authorities reported nothing that implied he’d been apprehended._

_Following protocol, our agents in the US began a wide search for the Winter Soldier. All extremes were taken to recover this valuable asset, including several sleeper-agents breaking cover. Through that considerable effort, we were able to track some of his movements. Security camera footage showed him in civilian garb at the Dallas train station, boarding a train to Chicago. Interrogation of several passengers onboard the train left the impression that Winter Soldier was disoriented while on board. He was apparently confused about what year it was, and appeared uneasy around the other passengers._

_In Chicago, he was seen boarding a bus to New York City. His movements in New York are unknown to us, but for two weeks he was completely off the grid. It was only through sheer luck that he was found by one of our agents, sleeping in a flophouse on the Lower East Side. It took several of our agents, in the garb of New York policemen, to take him into custody._

_Even after subsequent mental conditioning, codename: Winter Soldier has no answers for his conduct, or any memory of his time out of our control. While troubling, the incident appears to be an aberration, requiring nothing more than closer watch. It is further recommended that in the future he be excluded from missions on American soil._

 

Home.

The bastard escapes Hydra after nearly thirty years of being their wind-up toy soldier and living sex doll, and he goes _home._

Shortly after Tony’s parents died, he temporarily moved to a hotel--penthouse, turndowns, room service, and absolutely no press allowed past the doorman. They hadn’t even had the funeral yet and he couldn’t stand staying in his father’s house one more second. While he was there, he’d had a dream he was home, and yet nothing was where it was supposed to be. There was a bathroom where there should be a painting by some famous dead Italian. There was a window where there should have been a doorway to the kitchen. His mother’s piano had been replaced by an entertainment center that had the wrong type of TV. After about half an hour of confusion and frustration, he managed to wake up. He’d been wandering around, half-asleep, vaguely aware of his surroundings, and yet convinced he was at home and that something was wrong.

That, Tony imagined, was a small taste of what Barnes must have been feeling on his odyssey back to New York. It didn’t sound like he’d managed to break through every layer of conditioning they’d implanted--enough to know where home was, but not enough to know what year it was or even to know his own name, probably. He must have been so confused to return to Brooklyn and find it decades different, to go home with a picture in his mind of what home looked like, only to find that reality didn’t match it. More than that, he would have found no one he knew and no one who knew him.

He thought about staggering through the sands of Afghanistan. Several times he’d wondered what would have happened to him if Rhodey hadn’t shown up in a helicopter and taken his sorry ass home. He would have been recaptured or dead from exposure in less than 48 hours, that much he was sure of.

Tony took a deep breath and wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans, thinking. He and Barnes had a lot in common, alright. Both jerks with hearts of (hopefully) gold, both captured by evil assholes, tortured by said assholes. They both escaped through smarts and determination and a healthy helping of luck. But whatever family or friends Barnes might have had would have been thirty years older and no longer around by the time he was looking for them. His Howling Commando buddies were retired and convinced he was dead. Steve had been on ice for decades, and wouldn’t wake up for decades more. When Barnes ran away, he’d gone home and found no one.

Tony had been running through the middle of a fucking desert and Rhodey had still managed to find him.

All this time he’d been looking for the big difference between him and Barnes, and it ended up being _Rhodey._

He was never going to hear the end of it.

Speaking of Rhodey…

There was a knock on his door. He quickly closed his displays and walked over, saying as he went, “Rhodes, we agreed on three hours. By my clock, I still have twenty-eight minutes. I don’t care if you’re in a wheelchair, I will--”

He opened the door and whatever witty thing he was going to say died in his throat. It was Rhodey alright, looking pissed off and sheepish and guilty. Standing next to him was the reason why.

“Mr. Stark,” Ross said. “Care if I have a word?”

So much for waiting to face Ross until he had a stick to hit him with. Tony swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “You could have just called.”

“Not until you change your hold music.” He pushed past Tony and into the room.

Rhodey looked up at him, about to apologize. Tony just held up a hand, mouthed _It’s fine, I got this_ and then shut the door in his face. He’d figure out a way to express his newfound appreciation for Rhodey’s undying loyalty later.

He steeled himself and turned around to face Ross.

“You called my bluff,” he said.

“And you weren’t bluffing,” Tony replied. “What do you want, a congratulatory hand-job?”

“I want what we discussed,” Ross said, slipping his hands into the pockets of his suit.

“Right, Hydra intel on the Winter Soldier,” Tony said and began wandering around the room. It was easier to think when he moved. “Why should I give it to you, exactly? You’ve played your trump card and all it did was piss me off. What’s plan B? Throw me in your supermax? It took the others, what, a week to break out? I’d be out in under 24 hours, and I’d do it _legally._ ”

“Who says that was my trump card?” Ross said, looking a bit too smug for comfort.

Tony glared at him, trying to think. Nothing came to mind. As far as he knew, he had no more big secrets Ross could release to the public, at least nothing on the scale of him being gangraped by the Ten Rings. After all, it wasn’t like he had a secret identity to protect, and holy hell was he glad he made _that_ particular impulse decision.

In order to buy some thinking time, Tony said, “You know, I might be a lot more willing to help if you told me exactly what it is you’re looking for.”

“The Winter Soldier is not in full control of his mind or body,” Ross said.

 _Obviously._ Tony rolled his eyes. “Some would say that makes none of this his fault.”

“Some would say that makes him dangerous,” Ross retorted. “Others might say it makes him useful.”

“Come again?”

“For years we’ve been stumbling across Hydra intel on a process they call ‘mental implantation.’ When Black Widow dumped all SHIELD and Hydra secrets onto the internet a few years ago, we were hoping to find more. We weren’t that lucky,” Ross said. “Imagine this, Stark--In two months, you go up against one of your old buddies who weren’t smart enough to sign the Accords. Instead of fighting them, you utter a string of nonsense words, and just like that, they’re putty in your hands. No battling, no property damage, no bad press, no unfortunate and crippling injuries,” he said, gesturing at the door where they’d left Rhodes. “Just peace.”

“And how exactly would that work?” Tony asked.

“As soon as I see the intel you have on the Winter Soldier, I’ll be sure to let you know. Odds are we’ll need you to help us build the machine.”

Tony snorted. “Please. You wouldn’t be able to afford me.”

“You might change your mind once you realize the full implications.”

“And what are those?”

“Absolutely no jail time for any Avenger who chooses to break the Accords. All we’d need to do is detain them long enough to implant the safewords. Then they’re free to go and live their lives.”

And Ross would be free to yank on their leashes any time he wanted. Call him paranoid, but the idea of an army of superheroes at Ross’s beck and call wasn’t exactly a comfort. “Nice way to cover your ass after that fiasco at the Raft.”

“I prefer to think of it as creative problem solving,” Ross said. When Tony didn’t look convinced, he added, “It’s the best solution for everyone, Stark. The world is safe from any rogue ‘heroics’ and instead of imprisoning enhanced individuals, we simply give them an off-switch.”

Sam had called it ages go, Tony remembered with a prickle of something that might have been shame. ‘ _How long is it gonna be before they lojack us like a bunch of common criminals?’_ he’d said. This was worse than implanting a GPS tracker, this was taking over their minds. And now Tony had to wonder, how long until Ross installed his ‘off-switch’ in every enhanced person he could get his hands on, him and Rhodey included? Tony had always been firmly against doing anything he didn’t want to do, but mind control was a step beyond. Contrary to popular belief, there was exactly one part of himself he actually liked, and that happened to be his unique and oh-so-special brain. To hand the controls over to anyone else, let alone someone like Ross…

He was silent for a moment, trying to give the impression that he was thinking it over. “So what exactly do you need from me?”

“Any intel you have on this ‘mental implantation’ process. Notes, records, we know they use a machine to start the process, so we’ll need the specs. We’ll also need the trigger words Hydra already implanted into James Barnes’s head.”

“Trigger words?” Tony asked, playing dumb. It wasn’t as easy as it looked.

“We think that’s how Zemo managed to take control of him in Berlin. No point in implanting new words when the old ones apparently work just fine.”

“I’ll have Friday dig it up. You’ll have the files within the hour.”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Dude,” Tony said with a dismissive roll of his eyes. “We’re not haggling here. We’re on the same side. One hour.”

“Have it your way, then,” Ross said, turning to leave. “But if you’re even one minute late, I’ll release the next video.”

“I’m positively trembling in my Black Sabbath t-shirt,” Tony said.

“You should be,” Ross said over his shoulder. He let himself out.

Tony let that send shivers down his spine for exactly three seconds before springing to action.

“Up and at ‘em, sweetheart, we’re on the clock,” he said, pulling his displays back up.

“You’re going to give Ross what he wants?” Friday asked. “You can’t be serious, boss,”

“Of course I’m not, which is why we have to hurry,” Tony said. “Pull up the specs you were showing me earlier.” He didn’t know what Hydra called this thing, but he’d been calling the machine the _Obi-Wan_. After all, it was responsible for the ultimate Jedi mind trick. However, now that he understood its full implications, that seemed a bit too light-hearted.

The blueprints for the machine appeared on his displays.

“Good,” Tony said. “Make a copy, save it on my personal hard drive, and then make some changes. Just enough so that it won’t work.”

Friday got to work and so did Tony. Ross wanted Barnes’s trigger words, and Tony couldn’t rely on Barnes’s position as the world’s reigning hide-and-seek champion to keep Ross from using them.

Zemo had been one man with deadly skills, but few connections and no political sway. He’d had to tell Barnes the words in person. Ross was the Secretary of State of the United Fucking States of America, the single biggest producer of media in the world. If Ross had the words, it wouldn’t matter where Barnes was. He could slide them into a movie, a commercial, a song on the radio, youtube’s next viral video. Hell, if it were Tony, he’d make some news story, something Barnes would undoubtedly watch. Make it about an Avenger or Steve or even Barnes himself. They could be sneaky and work the words into the report, or maybe they could even do it subliminally and combine it with a directive. _If you have any information regarding this incident, please report to Secretary Ross at 666 Dickhead Street._

Holy hell.

Jesus H. Christ, Barnes needed to get off the grid and he needed to do it ASAP, because of course Tony wasn’t going to give Ross the actual trigger words, but it was only a matter of time before someone dug them up just like Zemo had.

He’d seen enough Winter Soldier reports that he knew exactly which one he needed to send to Ross. After a quick search, he opened a file he’d read less than an hour ago, after he’d first cottoned on to the exact nature of Barnes’s compliance.

 

_Report--_

_Codename: WINTER SOLDIER_

_Project Notes, 13 June 1954_

_Today is a great day for Department X and Hydra._

_After he endured years of our most severe forms of coercion to no effect, many in Department X had considered codename: Winter Soldier to be useful as nothing but the key to unlocking the supersoldier serum Dr. Zola accidentally stumbled upon in Italy, 1943. Dr. Zola, however, managed to convince them to place him in cryofreeze. He promised to create an alternative form of coercion strong enough to affect our bull-headed American friend. The resulting machine is truly the good doctor’s masterpiece._

_I am pleased to report that after a great deal of experimentation, Dr. Zola’s mental implantation process has at last been successful. For years, his truly ingenious machine had either killed the subjects or destroyed their minds, rendering them useless vegetables. However, after several successful tests over the past few months, those in charge of Department X finally allowed the doctor to begin the process on codename: Winter Soldier. It has rendered the previously obstinate man completely obedient to any who say the following words in his presence:_

Here Tony hopped in, editing the file so that the nonsense trigger words were truly nothing more than nonsense.

_Medication_

_Elevator_

_Seven_

_Daughter_

_Downfall_

_Gutless_

_Ambient_

_Forty-two_

_Bleakly_

_Imminent_

_These phrases are obviously highly sensitive information. Beyond this record and one other, which has been entrusted to the Winter Soldier’s direct handlers, these words will never be written down or shared._

_We are currently planning a field test for the Winter Soldier in order to determine the exact nature and extent of his obedience. Hopes are high in Department X for our newest asset. More reports to follow._

 

“You done yet?” Tony asked.

“Just finished,” Friday said. “What about you?”

“Nearly,” he said. “I need you to make this file look as legit as possible. You feeling adventurous?” he added as he busted out some old code-writing moves he hadn’t used since high-school.

“Do you have to ask?” Friday said. “Where am I going?”

“I’m building you a backdoor,” Tony said. Creating malware undetectable by government cyber-security systems was easy-peasy for someone who had once hacked the Pentagon on a dare. “As soon as Ross or one of his lackeys opens this file, you’ll have complete access to their system. I need you to find whatever other blackmail materials Ross might have on me and get rid of them.”

“You really don’t know what it is?” Friday asked.

He didn’t, but to be fair, he hadn’t known about the Ten Rings video either. He had no idea what else Ross had stored away, but there had to be something. Ross was too chillingly confident, and calling his bluff had already bit Tony in the ass once. With any luck, he’d find out for sure in a few hours. “It took Jarvis five hours to hack SHIELD, so this will probably take you a little while. Do me a favor and stay off Ross’s radar?”

“You know me--quiet was a church mouse.”

Tony slipped the malware into the file she had just polished and rounded up a few files that happened to contain the phrases ‘mental implantation’, careful to not pick anything too revealing. After one more quick glance to check for any errors the two of them might have missed, Tony attached the whole mess to an email and sent it to Ross. He made sure to also attach a photo of himself flipping the camera the bird.

He looked at the clock and snorted. 37 minutes left. Maybe he should have let Ross barter. Even with Ross’s little interruption and him setting up his dazzling and devious trap, he still had six minutes until his three Rhodey-free hours were up.

He pulled Steve’s flip phone out of his pocket. After turning it over in his hands a few times, debating whether or not he should, he opened it and dialed.

Steve answered on the second ring. “Two phone calls in one day? Better be careful, Tony, this is how rumors get started.”

“Yeah, well, maybe a distraction would be a good thing,” Tony said, trying to rub the headache out of his right temple. “Listen, you have any place you can stash Barnes? Somewhere completely off the grid, no TV, no radio, no newspapers, no internet?”

“Um, maybe…” Steve said slowly. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to avoid a repeat of Berlin,” Tony said. “You know he tried to kill me, right?”

“Well then, that should make you two even.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I murder his parents?” Tony said. “I completely forgot. That must have been after I invented time-travel, but before I had a lovely and cathartic conversation with my 25 year old father where he touchingly revealed how proud he’d be to have a son just like me.”

“Tony, I didn’t mean--”

“Ross is looking for the words--” Tony interrupted. He was definitely not having that conversation with Steve right now. “The ones Zemo said to turn your pal into the freaking Terminator. I’ve got him distracted for now, but he’ll figure it out eventually, especially with Zemo in custody, and if he finds a way to make Barnes hear them--”

“Alright, I get the picture,” Steve said. “I’ll come up with something.”

“Well, wherever you put him, don’t lose the poor bastard.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He was speaking before he was even sure this conversation was a good one to have. His mouth tended to work faster than his brain sometimes, and that's saying something. “Did you even look for him? After he fell from the train. Did you even try to recover his body?”

Steve was quiet for a moment, his end of the line silent except for the sounds of him walking. Tony imagined him leaving a room where he might be overheard and finding somewhere private. “No. Red Skull was launching the Valkyrie in less than twenty-four hours. There wasn’t time. And then the plane went down…”

“If you hadn’t sacrificed yourself so heroically for the good of humanity, if you’d stopped Hydra and been awake to tell the tale, would you have gone looking for Barnes?”

“I… I don’t know. I like to think I would have.”

“But?”

“But I saw him fall hundreds of feet. As far as I knew he was a normal man. He was dead.”

And Rhodey had seen Tony’s convoy get blown to hell. Steve had seen no dead body and a dead friend. Rhodey had seen no dead body and a chance.

It made sense now. All of it. Nothing Steve had done over the past few weeks had been accomplished without a heavy dose of guilt. If he hadn’t abandoned Barnes, Barnes never would have become the Winter Soldier, and most of the mess they were in now never would have happened. Steve was a good man, a loyal friend, and sure, maybe Barnes even deserved a friend like him, but Tony couldn’t blame him for not looking.

However, he could be thankful as hell Rhodey didn’t give up so easily. He owed Rhodey a lot. He owed him… well, the only thing currently coming to mind was a Lamborghini, but that didn’t seem to be good enough.

“Look, whatever you’re thinking, it’s nothing I haven’t told myself a hundred times,” Steve said.

Tony actually laughed. “You know, Cap, I doubt that.” Turning serious, he said, “Hide Barnes. Hide everyone, but especially hide Barnes. Ross is going to be royally pissed at me when he finally figures this out and I do not want him siccing the Russian Grim Reaper on me.”

“Ross won’t get his hands on him, I swear.”

“Good. I’ll keep you updated.” Tony hung up. Fiddling with the phone in his hands, he thought, trying to come up with something awesome and expensive for Rhodey, but nothing seemed to stick. Everything that came to mind was something Tony would want, and the only thing Tony wanted that Rhodey had ever been impressed with was the Iron Man suit. Of course, he could just tell Rhodes _thank you_ but that was so out of character, he might think Ross had managed to brainwash him.

“Boss,” Friday said, breaking into his reverie. “Someone in Ross’s office just opened your files.”

He looked up with a little smile. He’d known no one would notice his trick, but confirmation that he was a bad ass was still nice from time to time. “Go get ‘em, sweetheart,” he said. “Good hunting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What, an update, and it hasn't even been a month since the last one? I must be dreaming :)
> 
> We are quickly approaching the end! As usual, thanks so much for all the comments and kudos!


	9. One

Tony loved it when he was right. And he hated when he was wrong.

When he was both at the same time, well… he wasn’t sure there was a word in English to describe what he was feeling.

Nauseated might be a good word.

He was watching the news again, only this round it was a story that had originally aired in Ukraine and had been picked up by news agencies around the world. The interview with an elderly man that was currently playing had been translated to English, and the two voices speaking in two languages created a chaotic jumble of sounds. But every word Tony heard served to reaffirm that he was both a genius and a complete idiot.

 _“The nurse came in to give me my medication when all of the sudden--bang bang bang--gunfire, coming from down the hall,"_ the old man was telling a reporter. He had burn scars on his face and hands, and an oxygen tube in his nose. _"I thought it was down by the elevator. There were maybe seven shots, and Sonia, my Daughter, she panicked and tried to run away."_

The segment cut to the anchor, a stick-thin strawberry blonde. She wasn’t speaking English either, and Tony thought he knew why--trigger words only worked in specific languages. _"The incident occurred well over a decade ago,"_ she was saying, an English translator speaking over the top of her while a banner reading NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN AVENGERS FIASCO scrolled across the bottom of the screen. _"But it was only this morning that Ukranian intelligence agencies received information linking the downfall of the Avengers to this cowardly and truly gutless attack on a hospital in Kiev. That connection is, namely, James Buchanan Barnes, the infamous Hydra agent who just weeks ago was accused of orchestrating an attack on the UN."_

Just like last time, the media had gotten ahold of a picture of the Winter Soldier on scene and in action. Unlike last time, this one was real. It was a still from a hospital security camera, and Barnes was apparently in the middle of gunning down two security guards and a doctor.

Behind him, dumping a can of gasoline on the floor, was Natasha.  

 _"The involvement of the former KGB agent, Natasha "Black Widow" Romanoff, while disturbing, is not altogether surprising,"_ the anchor continued. _"Her checkered past has been called into question several times, but recent events have left little doubt as to whether or not her allegiance to the free world is resolute. One top officer described the current atmosphere of the international intelligence community by stating the ambient fear is overwhelming.”_ The quote was from Ross. Tony had to had it to the guy, he had the balls of a brontosaurus to get on international television and say something like that with half the Avengers--including Natasha Motherfucking Romanoff--on the run from the law. _“And with good reason. The 2002 hospital fire in Kiev left forty-two people dead, and more than two hundred wounded. While some might deem it demagoguery to look bleakly at the future, the fact remains that the Winter Soldier and Natasha Romanoff are both currently fugitives, and experts say a similar attack, or perhaps one even worse, is imminent.”_

Goddamn Ross.

They were all there--every single fake trigger word Tony had given him was embedded in the news segment in exactly the right order. Ross thought he could trigger Barnes through the media. Tony got that right, at least.

However, it was difficult to give himself any brownie points or gold stars when he had been blindsided again by Ross and his seemingly endless stash of Avenger blackmail materials. Tony had been worried Ross had something else on him, and, even though he wasn't entirely sure what that might have been, he'd been willing to risk letting it become public knowledge. He had never meant to do the same to Nat.

What else did Ross have stashed away?

A different but more immediately answerable question was what else did _Tony_ have stashed away?

Friday was currently busy rounding up blackmail material--and taking her sweet time doing it, too--so Tony had to do the search himself, but it didn’t take him long to find the file.

 

_Mission Report: WINTER SOLDIER_

_Kiev, 7 July 2002_

_Objective: Minister_ _Zakir Bezrukov_

  
_A joint operation between Department X and the Red Room took place on the 7th of July of this year._

_After entering the hospital at approximately 10:57 pm, our agents quickly neutralized the guards stationed outside the minister's room and made their preparations. By 11:24 the building was engulfed with flames. The target was eliminated, and his family was included in the collateral damage. Never let it be said that Hydra makes idle threats._

_The mission cannot be declared a complete success, however. It appears SHIELD was aware of our plan. Before they could reach the rendezvous point, our agents were intercepted by a lone SHIELD agent who seemingly possessed prodigious skill and who pursued them across the city. The chase only ceased when the car--being driven by the Red Room's Agent Romanoff--veered off the road and into the Dnieper River. Romanoff was rendered unconscious in the crash, and it was only after pulling her from the sinking car that codename: Winter Soldier engaged the SHIELD agent pursuing them. He was, however, unsuccessful in neutralizing the SHIELD operative. He must have realized he was no match for the Winter Soldier because, after a brief altercation, he fled, presumably reporting all he had seen and experienced to his supervisors. Rather than pursuing and neutralizing this clear threat to Department X and Hydra, the Winter Soldier chose to retreat to a safe house with Romanoff, where they were both recovered two hours and forty-three minutes after their originally scheduled rendezvous._

_As a result of the evening, Winter Soldier's injuries are extensive and his return to cryosleep has been postponed in order to give him time to heal._

 

_Additional note:_

_It does not need to be said that codename: Winter Soldier's actions during this mission were both the cause of the mission failure and exceedingly worrisome. Upon investigation, I have found no less than nine incidents in the past where he has chosen to let Hydra agents die in the field rather than fail a mission or risk exposing Department X. All of these incidents were met with the same unflinching resoluteness we have come to expect from one of our most valuable assets. This diversion from mission and behavioral parameters is, simply put, disturbing. There are some who have speculated that, after nearly fifty years of successful use, the Winter Soldier has simply come to the end of his shelf-life, and, like an old computer, is beginning to malfunction. This answer is preferable to the alternative: namely, Department X's control over this volatile asset may not be as absolute as our predecessors led us to believe._

 

_Addendum:_

_The esteemed Madame B, formerly of the Red Room and retired director of the Black Widow Ops, has provided us with some insight into codename: Winter Soldier’s catastrophic diversion from mission parameters in Kiev. The files she has so graciously shared are attached._

 

With a flick of his wrist, Tony turned the page and saw a handwritten note, the handwriting long and looping. It was also cyrillic. Luckily for him, Friday had translated this too albeit in the much more boring Times New Roman font.

 

_Comrade Karpov,_

_Attached are all the notes I took while observing training sessions between Romanoff and the Winter Soldier. I hope they shed some light on the situation and help you to tame our wayward son and daughter._

_Madame B_

 

The next few pages were handwritten as well. Tony skimmed them, just enough to get an idea of what he was dealing with. He didn’t bat an eye at sifting through Barnes’ dirty laundry, but Natasha’s? That felt like a betrayal. Plus, he was much more likely to end up dead because of that one.

 

_From the personal log of Madame B_

_Project: BLACK WIDOW_

_Dates: 1991 -- 2002_

 

_6 March 1991_

_… Due to the Winter Soldier’s success with our brothers in the Wolf Spider program, I thought it would be beneficial for our girls to see a demonstration and, if Department X allows it, even a training session. The following girls will be excused from the nightly viewing in order to attend: Anya, Galina, Ilya, Karina, Natalia, Raisa, and Yelena…_

 

_5 November 1993_

_… Given the small amount of time we are afforded with such an excellent teacher, I’ve had to limit the number of students included in the training. The following girls will be in attendance: Anya, Ilya, Karina, Natalia, Raisa, and Yelena…_

 

_16 September 1995_

_… While the failure of the Wolf Spider Program is regrettable, it nevertheless has opened new doors of opportunity for our budding Black Widows. The following will receive extra training: Ilya, Natalia, and Raisa…_

 

At some point, Tony was going to turn numb to earth-shattering revelations.

Nat knew Barnes. He’d gathered that from the news footage. While it was surprising, Tony felt like he should have seen it coming. After all, how many Avengers-caliber super-assassins could there have been kicking around Russia over the past thirty years?

But the fact that she’d known him for what looked like the vast majority of her life?

Her betrayal in Germany suddenly made a lot more sense.

Tony also didn’t fail to notice that with each file, the list of girls grew shorter. First seven, then six, then three. Finally, Nat was the only one left. Tony wanted to believe that meant the other girls had washed out, or maybe fallen into Madame B’s category of _Unworthy of the Winter Soldier_. However, he was smart enough to know what that meant. By the time these files were written, odds are all the missing names were dead.

After all, Nat wasn’t _a_ Black Widow. She was _the_ Black Widow, the one and only.

There were more entries in Madame B’s log. Unfortunately, he was interrupted by the phone ringing. Well, by the computer ringing. Ross had decided to bless him with a video call this time.

After running a very agitated hand through his hair, Tony clicked answer.

“Tell me Stark, just how stupid do you think I am?”

“Well, you locked up Clint Barton and didn’t expect him to escape, so…” He shrugged. "I’d say pretty damn stupid.”

“Nice try with the fake trigger words,” Ross said.

“I’m sorry, fake trigger words?” he asked in the fake innocent voice that never fooled anyone and was never intended to.

“Even with the power outage, our facility in Berlin has enough redundancies to run security cameras. With the lip-reading software you so generously supplied, we were able to identify four of the words Zemo used on Barnes. Imagine my surprise when not a single one of them appeared on the list you gave us.”

“Surprised? Forget stupid, you’re an idiot.” He spun on his swivel chair, mostly because he knew acting childish would annoy Ross, but also because it would be better for everyone if Ross couldn’t see exactly how tired and bedraggled Tony actually was.

“I assume the schematics have been tampered with as well?”

“Please don’t tell me you tried putting someone in it yet.”

“I want that intel, Stark.”

“And I want to be in bed with a woman wearing a thong bejewelled with _actual_ jewels,” Tony said.

“I’m feeling generous, so I’ll give you twelve hours to make up your mind,” Ross said, ignoring him. “Smearing Romanoff’s name was easy. Next time I’ll go after someone with a more sterling reputation.”

“And when you run out of stuff to blackmail us with?”

“Please. With people like you, I’ll never run out.”

And with that, he hung up.

Tony groaned and slumped forward, immediately regretting doing so when his head hit the desk. He stayed there for a long time, his face smashed against a keyboard. Friday needed to hurry. He needed to talk to Pepper. Barnes needed to be free of the Winter Soldier. But more than anything, he needed to think.

He must have fallen asleep, because it was some time later that he woke with a start. Somewhere in his sleep-clouded brain, he thought he’d heard someone say his name.

“Tony?”

He turned and nearly fell off his chair.

“Oh my god,” Tony gasped.

“Don’t tell me I panicked you enough to actually push the panic button,” Natasha said, quirking up an eyebrow.

“No, I mean, oh my god, I’ve had this exact fantasy before.” He looked more closely at her. “Only you were wearing lacy black lingerie.”

She punched him in the mouth.

“Believe it or not, that was in the fantasy too.”

“Do me a favor and stop thinking with your downstairs brain for five minutes.”

“It’s harder than you might think.”

Her eyes narrowed, but he’d known for years now that Nat was not a fan of puns. “You’ve got some nerve you know that?”

“You just hit me, the least you can do is let me hit _on_ you.” He touched his lip gingerly and gave her a once over. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d stop by.”

“And give me a bloody lip.”

“The original plan was a hug, but I think you’re a little too excited for that right now.”

Tony felt the mood change, like a shifting wind bringing in a storm. “You saw the Afghanistan video.” Who was he kidding? Everyone had seen the Afghanistan video. After she nodded, he asked, “Did you see the one from Kiev?”

She crossed her arms and nodded again.

He gave her a little smile that was half sad, half apologetic. “You sure you didn’t come to punch me in the face?”

“That depends. What the hell is going on, Tony?”

After a brief hesitation, he pulled up the Winter Soldier files he’d fallen asleep looking at, the ones with the Black Widow attachments. As Nat looked them over, he said, “I have more. Ross wants them. I said no, he released my video. I gave him fake files, he released yours.”

“Why does he want them?”

“He wants Barnes’ trigger words. And the specs of the machine that turned him into the Winter Soldier in the first place.”

Even in the dark, her face awash with light from his screens, Tony could see her go pale.

“You know something about that?”

She took a deep breath, and when she spoke it was with the voice she used when she was trying very hard not to show that she was upset. “They showed us once, when I was a child. An example of what they could do to us if we didn’t obey.”

“Did they ever...?” Did they ever rape her? Did they ever torture her? Who was he kidding, her whole childhood was one long torture session. He didn’t think he could get away with asking that question, so he’d let her fill in that blank herself.

“Wipe my mind? No. Only him.”

“How well do you know him?” Tony asked.

“I was seven years old the first time I met him, but I was introduced to the Winter Soldier more than ten times, Tony. To him, every time was the first time. He never remembered me. He never remembered anything.”

It wasn’t lost on him that she didn’t answer the question. He decided to let it go. “Did you know who he was?”

“You mean that he was Bucky Barnes?” she asked. “Not until DC.”

What a world-rocker that must have been, Tony thought. Steve had learned his dead war buddy wasn’t dead. Nat had learned the super assassin who had helped train her and saved her life, the emotionless wind-up toy soldier who had remained unchanged since she was a child, had once been a thinking, feeling human being. Someone with a family, with friends, with a backstory.

Someone who hadn’t always been the monster he was then.

“But he saved you,” Tony said, pointing at the Kiev file. “Why?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. If he even remembers,” she added with a snort.

Tony was sure he did. He knew how he was supposed to feel. Grateful that Barnes had broken through enough mental implantation to save Nat. Angry that so many people had died. Guilty that he’d let Ross expose the skeleton-filled closet of a friend.

But instead… Barnes could snap out of it long enough to save Nat? To pull Steve from the Potomac? But when it came to his father, when Howard had called him by name, all Barnes had done was bash his skull in. He didn’t know why he expected this to be simple--he wasn’t the tight ball of fury he had been when he returned from Siberia, but he wasn’t ready to buy Barnes a drink either. One moment he felt angry, the next guilty, and always just plain sad.

But while he and Barnes would never be friends, that didn’t change the fact that it would be better for everyone if the dead-eyed Winter Soldier never made another appearance.

“You know anything about this machine?” Tony asked after he pulled the schematics up.

“Other than the fact that it used to scare the hell out of me? No. I would say I’ll look into it, but you currently have the largest library of Hydra intel that I know of, so…” she shrugged.

The problem had been simmering in the back of his mind for a while now--how to free Barnes from whatever hold Hydra and related parties might have on him, how to brainwash the Winter Soldier out of him. He thought he’d found a way to do it, but...

“How easy do you think it would be to get Barnes back in that chair?”

“If you use the words, easy. If you don’t…”

Tony didn’t like that. Maybe he was turning into one of those morally upstanding assholes he’d been so pissed at a few weeks ago, but now… He’d spent hours upon hours watching Barnes be reduced to a tin man without a heart or a brain or an ounce of free will. The idea of forcing him back into that machine, even if it was to help him, didn’t sit well with him.

The fact that it would probably hurt didn’t bother him much. He _had_ murdered Tony’s parents, after all.

“Do you at least know where they are?” Tony asked.

“Maybe I don’t want to tell you.”

“Maybe it rhymes with Bakanda?” That one was easy. There were maybe four people on the planet capable of hiding Steve and the others, Steve only knew two of them personally, and Tony knew they weren’t holed up in _his_ basement.

She rolled her eyes.

“You are absolutely no help, you know that?”

“Don’t be hasty, there is still your little problem with Ross,” Nat said. “Frankly, I’m amazed the solution hasn’t occurred to you yet.”

“What?”

“But in my experience, it’s the simple solutions that tend to elude the geniuses.”

“You better tell me soon, before I die from suspense or boredom. Or, you know, old age.”

“Or the shame of not having thought of it first.”

For once, Tony didn’t say anything and instead merely raised his eyebrows.

“Think, Tony. What’s the one thing that usually brings down shady American politicians?”

“Thinking with their downstairs brain?”

“Think harder. I’ll give you a hint--it rhymes with weak,” she said with a smirk. She turned to leave.

“Hey," Tony called after her. When she stopped, he asked, "You ok?”

“Always,” she said and disappeared into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this might be a disappointing chapter after the wait, but I’m bAAAaaaack!
> 
> So, so, so sorry for the insanely long delay, but here’s a glimpse into my life for the past five months--
> 
> 1\. Rage quit my job without having another lined up (TERRIBLE idea, by the way. I would not recommend it.)  
> 2\. Moved back in with my parents until I could find another job.  
> 3\. Wallowed in the pit of despair that was my parents’ basement...  
> 4\. Found my dream job (that also pays a lot more money)  
> 5\. Secured said dream job!!!  
> 6\. Am currently in the process of buying a house  
> 7\. House will need HELLA renovated, but it’s cute :)  
> 8\. I’m also taking grad classes this summer...  
> 9\. Recently remembered that I started writing a thing and realized that I should finish it… 
> 
> All that said, I can't guarantee a speedy next update...
> 
> Also I’m sorry for any mistakes in here, but as you can understand, I was a bit impatient to get it posted. :)


	10. Freight Car

_Mission Report: WINTER SOLDIER_   
_Maryland, 16 December 1991_ _  
_ _Objective:_ **_[REDACTED]_ **

_Mission was successful. No witnesses remain._

Six words and a redacted objective. Their lives, their deaths, _his parents_ summed up in six words, and the bastards didn’t even have the decency to record what they died for. For weeks he’d been afraid to read this report, even if the date was seared into his mind and his fingers were itching to type it into the search bar. He hadn’t been sure he could take it--the video had been bad enough.

But today, twitching with fury and nerves as he awaited Ross’s arrival, he hadn’t been able to help himself. When he finally managed to open the file, phone trembling in his hand as he read, he felt oddly… Disappointed. Indignant. Empty. He’d found his parents’ obituary, the one that told the truth, the one that really mattered, and it was six words long.

He slipped his phone back in his pocket and took a deep breath to steady himself, wondering what to call this apparently insane desire for self-abuse.

“This is an interesting choice for a meeting place,” Ross said, breaking Tony out of his thoughts. He gestured at the exhibits around them: an assortment of planes, UAVs, rockets, satellites, and--Tony’s favorite display--the Apollo 11 command module.

“This business has gotten a little nasty. I thought neutral ground sounded like a good idea,” Tony answered. He still wasn’t sure why the National Air and Space Museum occurred to him, but his second favorite exhibit might have had something to do with it.

“And how much did you have to pay them to close the whole thing down?” Ross asked, his voice echoing slightly in the dark, empty museum. He joined Tony in front of the Mark 1--a gift to Tony’s ego as much as to the museum. Cap had a whole section of the Smithsonian dedicated to him, it only seemed right that Tony carve out his own corner. He never visited the thing though, not like Steve visited his. He wasn’t as eager to live in the past. Clint had called him a futurist, after all.

“I’ve lost track,” Tony said. “I’ve donated so much money to this place, they had to invent an entirely new donor category just for me. I suggested ‘Badass Billionaire’ but I never heard how that particular idea was received.”

“I’m surprised you’re showing your face in public at all.”

“Why? Because you released a video of me being gangraped by the Ten Rings?”

If Ross was taken aback my Tony’s crassness, he didn’t show it. “I told you what would happen if you didn’t cooperate. I told you twice. You either didn’t believe me, or you didn’t care. Either way, you were wrong,” he said. “Stark Industries has been startlingly quiet since the first video became public, and there hasn’t been a peep from the Avengers since the second. Must have struck a nerve.”

“If I were you, I’d be more worried about Romanoff than Stark Industries,” Tony said. “And Pepper has been bugging me about doing some kind of press conference. I told her I’d get to it when I’m--” Ross was fiddling with his watch. “--good and ready. I’m sorry, am I boring you? Or can you just not refrain from doing something horrible for five whole minutes?”

“This is what I like to call a political dead man’s switch,” Ross said, showing Tony a device that was much more than a simple watch. In fact, it looked like Stark Industries had designed the damn thing. “If I don’t enter a code every so often, a data packet containing sensitive information on my next Avenger of choice gets released to the public.”

“So it’s a blackmail button.”

“Yes. If today doesn’t go the way I want it to, or if you get some crazy notion in your head--say, to record this conversation and leak it to the press--I don’t even have to go into the office. I can ruin your friends’ lives from the golf course if I want. So don’t get any bright ideas.”

“Please,” Tony said rolling his eyes. “Any plan I come up with would have more bells and whistles on it than just recording a conversation.”

“Good. Let’s get to business, then.” He sighed heavily. “You were right before. Things have gotten nasty. I don’t want you to be my bitch, Stark, I want you to be my ally. I’ve needed you as an ally ever since you changed the world with this damn thing,” Ross said, nodding at the clunky Mark 1.

“Being the world’s first superhero is a heavy burden, but I’m told I carry it with grace,” Tony said.

“Don’t be so full of yourself,” he scoffed. “Romanoff and Barton, Rogers, Barnes in his own way, Banner, hell even Thor--they all existed before you told the world you were Iron Man. But they existed in their own little corners, flitting from shadow to shadow. It was a safer world. Then you went and opened your big mouth and shone a spotlight on yourself and everyone like you. You changed the world, Stark. There’s no going back. All we can do is adapt.”

“And in your mind adapting includes brainwashing.”

“Hydra called it ‘mental implantation’.”

“And why rebrand something that already works?” he asked with a sarcastic shrug. “You’re only a half-step away from Hydra anyway.”

“Hydra wanted to establish a new world order and they were willing to murder millions of people to do it,” Ross said. “I am protecting America and her interests across the globe. Unfortunately for me, that includes working with you and your band of super-freaks.”

“That argument is bullshit and you know it. Half of us aren’t even American,” Tony said. “And let’s be real here, as soon as someone gets labeled an Avenger, they no longer have the luxury of nationalism.”

“Then luckily for me, I’ve always been more comfortable using sticks than carrots. This isn’t some women’s rights rally where we learn about consent. I don’t need any of you to agree to follow my orders, I simply need to make you follow them.”

Tony yawned, partly because he’d been up all night working on a new project and partly because he knew it would annoy the holy hell out of Ross.

“I don’t think you quite understand how far I’m willing to go, Stark,” Ross growled. Tony loved being right. “I’ll burn you and yours to the ground if it will keep just one of you from choosing the wrong side.”

“That sounds like a threat, Mr. Secretary,” Tony said mildly.

“Damn right it’s a threat. You think Stark Industries stocks took a tumble after you stopped making weapons? You think the Avengers got a raw deal in the Sokovia Accords? Just wait until I’m through with you. I’ll make what the Ten Rings did to you look like an eight year old’s birthday party--”

At that moment, Tony’s phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID and answered it. “What’s the word, hummingbird?”

“All files pertaining to the Avengers and related persons have been secured, boss,” Friday said.

“That’s my girl,” he said with a smile. “I put a package on a jet this morning. Do me a favor and make sure it was delivered?”

“I’m on it.”

He hung up and looked at Ross expectantly. “I’m sorry. Please continue--you were just threatening to break about twelve laws and I think violate the Geneva Convention?”

“Am I boring you, Stark?” Ross asked, jaw twitching with annoyance at the fact that all his threats weren’t phasing Tony in the slightest.

“Oh, no, not at all! That was just that bell I was talking about earlier. Do you want to meet the whistles?” He started for the main entrance. Ross followed, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. They turned a corner, and Tony let his eyes linger on the astronaut mural for a bit too long. He almost missed the look on Ross’s face as he saw the gaggle of reporters--cameras rolling and flashes popping--right outside the glass doors.

“Pepper _has_ been bugging me about having a press conference,” Tony said.

“If you make the press privy to a private conversation with the Secretary of State…” Ross stammered, positively apoplectic with rage. “It’s treason! Are you recording our conversation right now?” He lunged at Tony, who rolled his eyes and stood still as Ross dug his phone out of his pocket and threw it against the wall, shattering it.

“Your age is showing, Ross,” Tony said. “No one _records_ anything anymore. In the 21st century it’s all about the livestream. Besides, it’s not treason--it’s whistleblowing.” And now that Ross had effectively cut off the livestream, Tony could say whatever he liked. He took a deep, happy--all right, _smug_ \--breath, and clapped Ross on the shoulder. _This_ was what he wanted. To show Ross what it felt like to be exposed and caught flat footed, with no way out of the international spotlight and no way to spin the situation in his favor. If Ross had any semblance of human emotion in him, he would feel like he was being crushed by a freight car.

God, he loved winning. “You’re done, Ross.”

Ross stammered out an incoherent protest and Tony nodded in mock agreement. “Yeah, sure, the record of this conversation won’t stand up in any court. Oh, except for the court of public opinion. You’ll get crucified there. And I’ll get, what? A fine, which I can handle because I’m a badass billionaire, and maybe probation--brought down from jail time because I’m one suave, smooth-talking son of a bitch with a veritable army of the world’s best lawyers. You may get some support from the alt-right, but let’s be real here--‘alt-right’ is just another word for Nazi and I happen to know two centenarian supersoldiers who used to kill Nazis like they were on a mission from God.”

In what appeared to be a moment of mild panic, Ross turned to bolt for another exit. Tony caught his arm and spun him back around, masking the gesture by putting an arm around Ross’s shoulders. There were cameras watching after all.

“You can’t get out that way,” Tony said, marching them toward the doors. “I had them lock the place down. They invented a new donor category just for me, remember?”

They stepped out into the sunlight and were immediately set upon by the ravenous media. The shouts of their questions were so loud, Tony almost missed Ross hissing in his ear, “You must love pain, Stark.”

Pain, self-abuse… Tony decided to call it tempering. After all, heat and pressure only made iron stronger.

*

“Why exactly am I the one you’re calling for help?”

“On July 7th of 2002, the Winter Soldier was in Kiev when he was intercepted by a SHIELD agent who proceeded to kick his ass,” Tony said as he received landing instructions from the Wakandan airbase. His fingers tapped expertly at the helicopter’s holographic controls. “I’m going to make an educated guess and say that was you.”

On speakerphone, Clint Barton sighed heavily. Tony could imagine the annoyed roll of his eyes. “If you know that, then you know Nat was there too. Why don’t you ask her?”

“Because I’m asking you,” is what Tony said. He was thinking something else. Nat and Barnes went way back, and Tony had heard the tiny terrified note in her voice when she talked about the machine. He'd already hurt her enough by letting Ross expose some skeletons in her closet. He wasn't about to hurt her again.

“If you tell Cap--”

“He’ll say no,” Tony said. “And while you were on the other side of our little civil war, I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s impossible to change that man’s mind. He’s taken Barnes’s side over mine at least a dozen times in the past few weeks. You think that’s going to change now? If the idea comes from me… I did just blow the guy’s arm off. There’s no way he’d believe me.”

“Jesus Christ, what the hell happened to you guys in Siberia?”

Of course Steve hadn’t told anyone else about Tony’s parents. Of course he’d continued the lie to protect his precious Bucky. Tony pushed the anger he felt at that realization to the side and said, “Barton…” The videos. Tony remembered the sounds of Barnes’ screams when they put him in the machine and turned it on. Even if Tony was trying to help, even if he was as smart as he thought he was and it actually worked, it would sound like Tony was killing him. That wasn’t something Steve would just let happen. Informed consent was all well and good, but Tony was only guaranteed one shot. “I don’t trust Steve to trust me to do this.”

“I’m not sure _I_ trust you to do this.”

Fair enough, but… “If you didn’t you would have hung up on me by now.”

“And if Barnes says no?”

“Are you in Wakanda or not?” T’Challa was already on board. Now he just needed Clint. It was easy to see why so many people trusted Barton, with his slow and steady demeanor and his droll sense of humor. Trauma rolled off him like water off teflon and he was solid ground for anyone and everyone who happened to be sinking. If anyone was the bedrock of the Avengers, it was Clint Barton.

Which was why it took so long for Tony to realize he was a better liar than even Natasha. More importantly, if Hawkeye could take on the Winter Soldier in full Murder Mode, he could definitely take on a one-armed Bucky Barnes.

“Yes,” Clint said, defeated.

“Good because I’m landing in fifteen minutes.”

“What’s the plan?” Clint asked. He sounded as if he already regretted it.

The plan was to dig through a traumatized man’s memories to find the rotten core and then burn it away, like cauterizing a wound. This time, his usual plan of Ready, Fire, Aim wasn’t going to cut it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weeeeeeeeeee! An update!
> 
> I'll once again fall on my knees and beg forgiveness from anyone who has spent the last several months waiting on this next chapter. Life is life and by now I'm sure you're all tired of hearing about my personal problems. Also thank you to everyone who has commented/left kudos. I probably would have abandoned this if not for you guys!
> 
> Anyway, I was originally planning on ten chapters, but this one got away from me, so now we're going for eleven! Stay tuned for the conclusion!


	11. James Buchanan Barnes

Tony took a deep breath and steeled himself for how thoroughly and completely his day was going to suck.

The Wakandans were, to put it simply, amazing. Tony had boxed up the various pieces of his plan and shipped them to T'Challa with the hopes that someone in his employ would be able to read and understand the technical notes and directions he'd hastily scribbled on a legal pad. He'd been vastly underestimating them. Not only had they assembled both the mental implantation machine and his Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing device perfectly, but they'd also managed to find a glitch in his software patch and fix it. Both machines sat in a gleaming white laboratory filled with sleek windows and shining surfaces. Somehow, they'd managed to make the set up look... not comforting, exactly. But it didn't look like the batshit crazy, evil hulking mass of metal and machinery Hydra had used either. It looked clinical. Clean. 

Briefly Tony wondered why he was even here. Obviously the Wakandans were more than capable of using both machines. They also seemed willing to help the man who, until very recently, had been accused of murdering their last monarch. He could have simply sent them the parts and the instructions and let them sort this whole mess out, freeing him to sit on the couch, eat a bag of extra buttery popcorn, and watch Ross and his lawyers try to dance their way out of the mess of public outrage and special counsel investigations. 

But no. Tony had always been a hands-on person. This was his mess. Steve was his friend. They’d been his parents. And Barnes was his project.

He tried to keep that in mind as they rolled Barnes in on a table. The white undershirt he had on was wet with melting moisture and sticking to his chest. The stump of a left arm was covered with a small compression sock, keeping the mess of wires and sharp, twisted metal out of sight. He was still unconscious and shivering as his body recovered from cryo. It was an unpleasant process even with the Wakandan scientists trying to make it as humane as possible. They left them alone, as per Tony's request, and as he waited for Barnes to wake up he obsessively sorted through the plan. Or plans. He and Clint had covered everything from Plan A to Plan J, and those were just the ones they'd spoken out loud.

Plan A was simple. It was also the one that would feel most like getting kicked in the balls.

With a sharp intake of breath, Barnes awoke. Tony stood back and watched him take in his surroundings. His blue eyes widened when they landed on Tony, but the rest of his body fell very still, as if even breathing would set Tony off.

"Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey," Tony said, his voice flat.

When he didn't immediately attack, Barnes glared at Tony with suspicion. He sat up. The lack of a left arm made the action a struggle. Somehow Tony couldn't find it in himself to feel guilty about that one. After all, it's not like he ripped off the guy's actual arm.

"What--" Barnes cleared his throat and when he spoke again his voice was less raspy. "What year is it?"

All right, that one hurt a bit. Tony wondered how often he'd asked that question in the past. Not often, though getting a straight answer was probably even rarer. "2016. You've only been on ice for a little while."

"Where's Steve?"

"He's around. Barton's keeping him company."

There was a flicker of something on Barnes' face that looked very much like relief, and Tony understood. After all, what were the odds Tony would wake him up to tell him  _ good _ news? He was mildly annoyed at that realization, and wondered what it would take for Barnes and Rogers to have a goddamn selfish emotion for once in their lives.

"Then what--?"

"I'm here to save the day. It's what I do," Tony said, feigning humility. "Been doing it for years while you've been running around murdering people's parents." When Barnes flushed red and dropped his gaze, he felt the tiniest twinge of guilt. "I've been doing a lot of...research. I think I can help you out."

He pointed to the far side of the lab. There, surrounded by gleaming white and shining chrome, was the chair.

Barnes tensed and shifted on the table nervously, his eyes darting around the room as if he expected to find another traumatizing reminder of his past. “What the hell is this?” 

“This is…” what had he called it with Steve? “An olive branch. See I’ve been wracking my brain for weeks now, trying to figure out why you ran after Project Insight crashed into the Potomac. For a while I assumed it was because you didn’t fully remember who you were, but when you teamed up with Steve in Berlin, I realized you did remember. So maybe you hid because you didn’t want to face what you’d been doing for the past seventy years. All that waited for you if you turned yourself in was a psych ward if you were lucky, or a  _ very _ different kind of electric chair if you weren’t. But there was Steve--desperately looking for you, and the Bucky Barnes in the old news reels wouldn’t leave his best friend hanging. He wouldn’t hide from the consequences of his actions. No, he was a man of honor.” Barnes just glared at him, his eyes shining and wet, his expression one of mingled shame and anger. “It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that you hid because you were afraid. Not afraid of Steve or prison, but afraid that Hydra would find you again. You’re afraid of the havoc they could wreak if they ever got their hands on you. You’re afraid of ten little words.”

“How exactly is this an olive branch?”

“C’mon, Barnes, keep up,” Tony said. “T’Challa said you wanted to be put on ice until someone figured out how to undo the worst of Hydra’s damage. Why do you think I’m here?”

“You can fix me? How?”

“By hijacking your hippocampus to clear traumatic memories,” Tony said. When Barnes just stared at him blankly, he rephrased. “I’m going to dig around in your mind and rip out the weeds.”

“My mind’s not a very nice place. I don’t think you want to go digging around in there.”

Silently, Tony agreed. It would be like sticking his hand into a nest of vipers, but that line of thinking wouldn’t get them anywhere. “I’ve already seen plenty, Barnes. Seeing a little more won’t make much of a difference.”

He could tell from the look on his face that Barnes knew exactly what he meant. Holding his gaze was more difficult than Tony had anticipated. He’d seen this man brought to his absolute lowest, seen him reduced to nothing but a shivering ball of misery and raw nerves. It was hard not to think of that when he looked at him, and suddenly Tony understood everyone who’d seen the Afghanistan video and tried to treat him like he was made of glass. 

“Does Steve know?”

Tony wished he could pretend he didn’t know what Barnes was talking about. “Only if you’ve told him.”

If he felt any relief at that, he didn’t show it. “It’d be easier for you to just kill me.” 

“Translation: It’d be easier for you if you could just die already,” Tony said. “But I don’t think someone who successfully hid from the world for years, someone who fought tooth and nail to not be captured, truly has a deathwish. You’ve had ample opportunity to end it yourself, after all. Besides, that doesn’t seem fair.”

“Fair?” Barnes croaked.

“You murdered my mom and dad,” Tony said. “I have to live with that. And I’ll be damned if you don’t have to live with it too.”

All the fight went out of Barnes like air out of a balloon. He sagged and stared down at his lap where his flesh hand was resting on his leg. One of his fingers twitched, and Tony wondered if he was remembering curling those fingers around his mother’s throat. “Fair enough,” he said.

“It’s probably going to hurt like a bitch,” Tony said.

“Well, if it hasn’t killed me yet…” Barnes said, his lips quirking with the ghost of a smile. Tony had the fleeting realization that in another life he and Barnes would have gotten on like house on fire. 

The moment was killed by Clint’s voice in Tony’s ear.  _ “Stark, we’ve got a problem--” _

Their problem barged into the lab a second later, positively trembling with indignant rage. “Tony, what do you think you’re doing?” Steve said. 

Tony looked from Barnes to Steve and back, watched as the two of them met each other’s eyes, communicating silently. If Steve didn’t trust Tony, Barnes wasn’t going to either. Barnes shifted his weight, Tony took a deep breath, and just like that, the spider-silk strand of trust they’d built snapped. 

Plan B, then. Good thing he’d practiced his Russian on the helicopter ride over. “ _ Longing- _ -”

Barnes’ flesh hand wrapped around Tony’s throat before he could say anything else, squeezing just hard enough to choke out his voice but not strangle him completely. Tony struggled in his grip, but even one-armed, he was still a supersoldier. The look on his face was feral and furious, an expression he had only ever seen on the Winter Soldier, and Tony found himself praying for Plan C. 

Right on cue, there was a black dart of motion and Steve fell forward with a strangled cry, one of Clint’s taser arrows planted firmly in his back. Snarling, Barnes threw Tony away from him. He landed gracelessly, his head bouncing off the tile floor.

Steve was twitching and shivering beneath the brunt of the taser arrow, Tony was shaking his head, trying to clear the fog of pain, and Clint was facing down Barnes. “We’ve done this before, but now you’re short an arm and I’m a helluva lot older,” he sighed. With a flick of his wrist, the bow in his hands became a bo staff. “Would you mind if we just skipped to the end?”

Barnes did mind, if the wild haymaker he threw at Clint was anything to go by. He dodged it lightly and said,  _ "Longing,”  _ the Russian rolling off his tongue like he was born to speak it. The staff was a blur in his hands as he caught Barnes on his left side and his right knee before sweeping his legs out from under him entirely. Barnes landed on his back, his breath escaping his lungs with a pained grunt. Clint, still on his feet, said, “ _ Rusted.” _ He took another swing, but Barnes rolled away and the staff cracked against the tile. 

By that time, Steve had managed to rip the arrow off his back. He threw it across the room and surged to his feet, ready to rush to Bucky’s rescue. A mechanical whirr announced the activation of Tony’s suit. He’d hidden it amongst the shipping crates for just such an eventuality. What was that old one-liner about smart guys covering their ass?

The roar of repulsors almost drowned out Clint’s voice as he said, “ _ Seventeen-- Daybreak,”  _ and landed a solid jab to Barnes’ solar plexus.

Tony lunged at Steve even as the suit was still forming around him. He managed to catch Steve’s fist before it could touch Clint, who was far more preoccupied with Barnes. 

_ “Furnace. Nine. Benign.” _

Tony twisted Cap’s arm back, the suit whining with the effort. Steve lashed out with this other hand, his bare knuckles denting the metal and pulling away bloody.

Cap was a beast, but he was nowhere near as formidable without his shield. And besides, Tony would have had him dead to rights in Siberia if Barnes hadn’t grabbed his foot. With a particularly savage backhand, Steve went down. Somewhere in the back of his mind Tony could hear Barton still chipping away at Barnes’ body with the staff and his mind with the words. 

_ “Homecoming. One.”  _

Steve was too slow getting up. Tony took advantage of the situation and locked his hands into a set of magcuffs. It didn’t hinder him as much as Tony had hoped. Steve came up swinging, his cuffed hands landing a savage uppercut. Tony stumbled back and fought to keep his feet. He only managed to do so because Steve turned his attention to Barnes and Barton.

“You gotta fight it, Buck, stay with me--”

A well placed repulsor blast sent Steve flying across the room, the wall shattering with the impact.

_ “Freightcar." _

The room fell eerily still, silent save Steve’s pained gasps. Barnes was motionless, his face the blank, hard mask Tony had seen in countless pictures and videos of the Winter Soldier. Clint was crouched, poised to strike, as though he didn’t entirely believe the trigger words would work. 

Tony finally broke the silence. “What the hell, Barton? You were supposed to keep him distracted!”

Clint relaxed and turned to face him. “He promised me he wouldn’t overreact,” he said with a shrug.

“You mean you  _ told _ him?”

“Well excuse me for thinking honesty is the best policy.”

“Honesty is the best policy?” Tony repeated incredulously. “This isn’t your daughter’s third-grade classroom--”

“No, this is more important because this is our family,” Clint spat. “And if we’re going to piece it back together again, lying ain’t gonna cut it.”

Tony could hardly argue with that. After all, Steve lying to him was one of the reasons they were in this mess in the first place. That thought diminished any sympathy he might have felt as he watched Steve struggle to stand. 

“I can--” Steve started, but one of his knees gave out and he was back on the floor again, gasping. Tony must have broken a few ribs and more if Cap was that far gone. 

“I know, big guy, I know,” Tony said, taking hold of the cuffs and dragging him across the room. “You can do this all day. How about you do it over here while I get some work done.” He deposited him on the floor beneath a window, making sure the magcuffs attached themselves to the metal window frame.

Once Steve was secure, Tony stepped out of his Iron Man suit and put it in sentry mode--he knew Steve wouldn’t stay down for long. “Tell him to sit in the chair,” he said to Barton. 

As Barton relayed the order, he conjured up a holographic interface before him. It was Wakandan, but it was surprisingly similar to the set up Tony had in his own workshop. When all of this was said and done he really was going to have to pick their brains and figure out exactly what else T’Challa had stashed away in this little, reclusive country of his. Barton followed his directions and strapped Barnes into the chair, arranging the sensors and other equipment. When he was finished, Barnes had more wires attached to him than a switchboard. 

“What exactly is your plan here?” Barton asked, joining Tony. There was a wide, open space between the chair and the controls. They were going to need a lot of room.

“The trigger words only work because, whether he realizes it or not, Barnes remembers them. We use the BARF to find the root memory, zap it with the Obi-Wan, and free us all from this metaphorical sword of Damocles.” He watched as the machine attuned itself to Barnes’ brainwaves. The controls included a live-feed of Barnes’ neurons, synapses firing like lightning. Thanks to his collection of Hydra files, he knew the exact date of Barnes’ first mental implantation. Hell, he’d seen the video. But the brain didn’t have a built in calendar. Locating the memory was going to be tricky. As the brain was physical, the memory had to have a physical location, but it wasn’t as simple as aiming a laser at the hippocampus and firing. Physical sets had helped Tony as he was creating the machine. For his presentation at MIT, Tony had stabilized the scene with a vague approximation of physical props. But that required planning, and he couldn’t plan for what he’d find in Barnes’ head. As a result, the images they saw might be a little wonky, but they’d still get the gist.

“In other words, we’re going to be here a while.”

“Yep.”

“Should’ve brought some snacks,” Clint sighed. 

“I packed you a box of donuts,” Tony said, waving vaguely at the pile of shipping crates to their left. He continued to calibrate the machine to Barnes’ mind as Clint dug them out. 

“Chocolate filled!” he exclaimed when he opened the box. “You know me too well.” He took a bite out of one and nodded happily. He’d eaten three by the time he caught on. “Hang on… Did you pack these before you even asked me to help?” he asked. 

“What can I say?” Tony said, shooting him a grin. “I know you too well. You ready?”

His mouth full, Clint shrugged as if to say,  _ I got nothing better to do. _

“Tony,” Steve rasped. “Tony, c’mon, don’t do this.” 

He very carefully did not look at Steve while he fired up the BARF.  Projectors flickered to life, filling the room with strings and drops of light.

“I’m the one who lied to you,” Steve was saying. “I’m the one who left him behind in the first place, you said it yourself. It’s my fault.”

“No one’s arguing with you on that front, Cap,” Tony said. “That doesn’t change what I have to do.”

“Dammit, it’s my fault!” He had finally worked up the energy to put some venom in his words. “If you want to punish someone, then here I am. Just--” he pulled on the magcuffs. The window frame groaned but held. “Just leave him alone, please. He’s been hurt enough. Tony… please.”

The begging would have been pathetic if it weren’t so fucking selfless. 

Any reply Tony might have had disappeared when the lights coalesced into a scene before them. A young boy with messy dark hair stood beside a brick wall, angrily beating two blackboard erasers together and sneezing as he inhaled some dust. A pile of them were at his feet, awaiting their turn.

Another boy entered the scene, this one blond and twitchy. He was wearing the same short pants and shirt, but his wardrobe had clearly seen better days. Tony made a mental note to mercilessly mock Steve for the short pants once this was all over and they were friends again.

If they were ever friends again.

_ “What do you want?”  _ The way young Bucky spat the word  _ you _ said loud and clear that Steve was the last person he wanted to talk to.

_ “I just… thanks for not telling on me,” _ little Steve said, uncharacteristically timid. He had a voice like a flute.

_ “I ain’t no rat. Did Tommy Vasco put you up to it?” _

_ “He said he’d pick me for baseball if I did.” _

_ “No one’s going to pick you for baseball. You throw like a punk.” _

_ “I do not!”  _ little Steve scooped up an eraser from the pile and lobbed it at Bucky, leaving a white chalk mark on his left sleeve. Annoyed, Bucky threw one back and the next moment they were engaged in a full-scale battle, the air cloudy with white dust and filled with flying erasers. The battle quickly became a wrestling match and then devolved into a fit of laughter, leaving both boys on the ground, covered in chalk dust, giggling.

Bucky hauled Steve to his feet and half-heartedly tried to brush some of the dust out of his hair.  _ “See? Told you you’re a punk. What’s your name, kid?” _

A memory of Howard sprang unbidden into Tony’s head. He’d been a child, not yet graced with the social charm and charisma he had as an adult and cursed with a genius IQ that made it nearly impossible for him to make friends.  _ Pick a fight _ , Howard had suggested.  _ Show the boys you’re just like them and they’ll come around. _ Maria had put a stop to that line of thinking almost immediately, but Tony had to wonder, a bit sardonically, if that was why he couldn’t seem to go a single day without butting heads with a friend.

“Well,” Tony said, tapping away at the controls hovering in the air before him. “At least we know it’s working.”

The image flickered and the boys were replaced with a grown Bucky Barnes. The expression on his face and his determined stride said he was in full Murder Mode. Three armed guards in full tac gear were no match for him, and just as he was about to put a bullet in one of their heads, Tony watched as his own doppelganger ran into the scene. This was Berlin. 

“What exactly is your plan here, Stark?” Clint asked as he watched Barnes pull the trigger and Tony catch the bullet with his gauntlet.

“We’re looking for a very specific memory, so we just have to go back--” he said.

But as the Tony in the hologram was punched so hard it sent him flying and the real Tony was trying to aim the BARF, the image flickered and changed again.

The Winter Soldier, muzzled and armed to the teeth, was running somewhere dark, a woman right on his heels. An instant later an arrow zipped through the air and bounced off his metal shoulder with a clang. Barton charged. The woman intercepted him but it wasn’t long before the soldier joined the fray. 

“Is that Nat?” Steve asked.

The machine flickered yet again and the Winter Soldier was looking down at a little girl with a shock of wine-red hair. She smiled timidly at him and held out a piece of candy in a bright yellow wrapper. The Winter Soldier took the candy and held it in his metal hand, staring at it as if he didn’t know what to do with it.

_ There _ , Tony thought with a surge of triumph. That's what he needed. He followed the pattern of flashing neurons left by this most recent switch, trying to dig deeper into Barnes' long term memories. But instead of something older, the next scene was of an adult Nat and the Soldier sitting next to each other on a bed, their thighs touching. They were both filthy and sweaty. Natasha had an impressive bruise starting to form on her right cheek and there was a dark spot on her black tank top that looked like it might be blood. But instead of stitching herself up, she tugged the soldier's muzzle off and ran a hand through his tangled hair. After the briefest hesitation, she leaned in to press a soft kiss to his lips. But when he didn't kiss her back, she pulled away and sighed sadly.

“He knows her…” Steve said, watching the scene unfold with wide, rapt eyes.

Once again, the scene changed of its own accord. Now it was Steve and Barnes, surrounded by smoking wreckage, both of them bloody, out of breath, and staggering.

_ "You know me," _ Steve said. 

_ "No I don't!"  _ Barnes screamed, throwing a wild punch. Steve blocked the blow with his shield and they both stumbled, fighting to regain their feet.

“ _ Bucky,"  _ Steve pleaded breathlessly.  _ "You’ve known me your whole life.” _

Tony let out a frustrated sigh and started muttering under his breath, jabbing angrily at the controls.

“Having trouble?” Barton asked. He'd finally put down the donuts.

“Not gonna lie, I thought this would be a bit easier... ” Tony said. 

Whether it was triggered by the words or Tony's manipulation of the controls, the scene changed again. This time it showed a much younger Barnes strapped to a table in a dark room, surrounded by mysterious and vaguely threatening machinery. Based on his short hair and the fact that both his arms were still attached to his body, Tony placed this memory sometime during WWII. 

After a few seconds of Barnes mumbling a string of numbers, Steve ran into the room.

_ “Bucky!” _ Steve said, taking in the straps and general horror of the situation in with a glance.  _ “Oh my god…” _ He ripped the straps holding Barnes down and leaned over him.  _ "It’s me. It’s Steve." _

_ “Steve?” _

_ “C’mon.” _ He helped him stand and Barnes clung to him for a moment, unsteady on his feet.

_ “I thought you were dead…”  _ Steve said, breathless with relief.

Barnes just looked him up and down. _ “I thought you were smaller…” _

Behind Tony, Clint asked, “Need help?”

“I know what I’m doing--”

But before he could do anything, the scene changed again and Tony heard his own voice, shaking with emotion.  _ “I know that road…” _ He and Steve were huddled around an ancient computer monitor, Barnes was slowly backing away from them. He raised his gun about an inch or so, preparing for the attack he knew was coming.

Through the projection, Tony saw the real Barnes, restrained in the chair and staring stoically forward. All at once, Tony understood. Barnes' memories weren't lineal. They were tangential. “He’s listening to us," Tony said as the projected version of him glared at Steve.  _ "Don't bullshit me, Rogers. Did you know?"  _ He could barely stand the expression on his own face, raw and savage, like a cornered, injured animal. 

Tony shook his head and tried to think. When he talked, memories of him surfaced in Barnes' mind. Same with Clint and Steve. When Steve mentioned Nat's name, they saw more of her-- “Cap," Tony said, tearing his eyes away from the brawl in the middle of the room (but not before noting that he was kicking some serious ass). "You gotta ask him to remember--”

“I’m not going to help you hurt my friend!" Steve spat.

“You’re not hurting him, you’re saving him!" Tony shouted back. God, even when they were trying to accomplish the same thing, they still couldn't get along. "Help him remember the first time Hydra--”

Their fight in Siberia was cut short, replaced by a familiar scene: Zola's lab in 1943. There was the same table, same machinery looming in the background, only Barnes wasn't strapped down yet. He was struggling in the grip of two soldiers. The room was full of raised voices--some German, some English, and a lot of wordless shouting. At one point, Barnes landed a brutal kick to one man's stomach. He nearly got away, but a third soldier came into view with a pistol in his hand and the uniform of an officer. He struck Barnes across the face with it. The force of the blow was enough to spin him halfway around, and the others seized their chance. They bent him over the table and pinned him down. Barnes kept up fighting until the officer pressed the gun to the back of his head and muttered something in German. Barnes froze, and there was nothing but the ragged sound of his heavy breathing and the clink of the officer unbuckling his belt.

“What the hell?” Steve gasped.

Barnes cried out in pain as the officer shoved inside him.

“God dammit, not the first time he was raped. The words, Barnes!” Tony called. “The first time you heard the words.” Still in the chair, the real Barnes didn’t move, but the scene changed.

_ “What the hell is this?”  _ Barnes asked from inside the tiny, reinforced containment cell of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Zemo was seated at a desk in front of him, holding a small red book.  _ “Why don’t we discuss your home? Not Romania. Certainly not Brooklyn, no. I mean your real home.” _

“Steve, you gotta help me out here,” Tony said over the top of Zemo reciting the words and Barnes shouting.

Steve just stared at him, his face ashen. “The  _ first _ time he was…?” He was silently begging Tony to deny it, to tell him no, he hadn’t just heard what he thought he had.

Immediately Tony regretted his flippant tone and poor choice of words. He’d become desensitized to seeing Barnes brutalized and violated, but Steve… “Sorry, Cap, but you were bound to find out eventually.”

And then he had an idea. A horrible, disgusting idea that would only occur to a heartless bastard. Momentarily abandoning the BARF controls, he whipped out his phone and did a quick search of all the Hydra files Friday had sent him. He found June 13th, 1954 and commandeered one of the projectors to play the video.

Like all the old video files, this one was black and white, flickering and grainy. The people were gray specters as they flitted around the room, tinkering with one machine over here, arranging a tray of medical supplies there.

"What is this?" Steve asked.

"I told you Barnes was Hydra's favorite film star. Here's a golden oldie for ya." Tony didn't dare look at Steve. He could picture the furiously heartbroken look on Steve's face, and he knew that if he saw it with his own eyes, he'd lose his nerve.

In the video Barnes stumbled in, escorted by two armed guards and a familiar face: Zakharov. 

_ "How's it going, Doctor?" _ he asked, his mouth forming Russian words while they heard English.

Arnim Zola turned around, looking more like an evil Elmer Fudd than ever, and said,  _ "We will be ready momentarily." _ His eyes lingered on Barnes for a moment, filled with smug glee, before he turned back to his device.

_ "What is this?" _ Barnes asked hoarsely.

Zakharov smiled at him.  _ "This is the good doctor's greatest accomplishment. You've seen its results before. Remember?" _

Barnes was silent for a moment, thinking.  _ "O’Brien and the others?" _

_ “If you weren't so stubborn, I'd call you clever," _ Zakharov said fondly. _ "Don't worry, you won't end up exactly like them. They were our test subjects, lab rats. We put them in the machine and turned them into vegetables, but you..." _ He caught Barnes' chin in a tight grip and tilted his head back.  _ "We’re going to put you in that machine, and when we’re finished, you will be the perfect, obedient soldier." _

Barnes blinked and then started to laugh.

Zakharov gave his face a hard shove and hissed,  _ “You think this is funny?” _

_ “Pal, I think it's hilarious. You’ve had fucking years to break me, and you couldn’t do it. In the end, you need that to do your job for you,” _ Barnes said, spitting at the chair.  _ “It’s funny because I won.” _

Zakharov stared at him and the silence stretched out, uncomfortable for everyone.  _ “After Dr. Zola is finished with his work, I’m going to order you to get on your knees. When you’re done sucking my cock, you can tell me whether or not you think you won.” _

Finally,  _ finally _ Tony's machine and Barnes’ brain caught up. The scene was trying to change, so he stopped the video and connected the projector once again. The video had done its work. Barnes was remembering, and his memory was being played out in front of them in three dimensions and full color. 

Tony watched the memory just enough to make sure it was the same day. Everyone but Barnes was speaking Russian, so he had to wait to see if Barnes' words matched up. 

_ "What is this?" _ Barnes asked.

“Gotcha,” Tony said, victorious as he found and selected the right neurons to fry.

“Tony, stop this," Steve said, a desperate tint to his voice. "You’re about to put his brain in a blender--”

“Tell me something I don’t know, Cap," he replied, focusing on powering up the Obi-Wan. The Barnes in the memory was in the chair by then. He started to scream. 

Tony moved to shut down the BARF, but he was distracted by a groan of metal. He turned in time to see Steve pull the magcuffs a few inches off the window frame before they snapped back. “You’re really going to do this to him?" Steve asked, breathless with anger and exertion. "You’re not going to let him decide for himself? Not even after all you’ve seen?”

“I was giving him a choice, and he was on board until you burst in with your goddamn hero complex!” Tony shouted over the cacophony of screaming memories. "This is happening. Yell at me all you want, shut your eyes or watch, trust me or don’t, I don't care. I'm saving him whether you want me to or not."

He turned off one machine and activated another, replacing Barnes’ sixty year old screams with brand new ones. Tony barely heard the shriek of metal as Steve finally managed to rip the magcuffs away from the window frame. In that instant, Clint flew across the room and slammed them back, securing him once again. Tony didn’t think he’d ever been so grateful to see Hawkeye in action. He made a mental note to set up a few trust funds for the Barton children by way of thanks.

Steve and Clint were shouting at each other, Barnes was screaming in chair, the hum and buzz of the machine was the undercurrent of it all, and Tony had to focus. Too little and this would all be for nothing, too much and who knew what Barnes would be turned in to. The seconds stretched out as Tony watched tiny bits of Barnes’ mind disappear. Finally, when the last piece had vanished from his monitor, Tony tapped a button and the machine turned off with an anticlimactic  _ thunk _ .

The silence was eerie after so much noise, so Tony broke it by shrugging and saying, “That was easy.”

Steve let out a disgusted noise and shook his head. 

“You can let him go now,” Tony said, tossing Clint a small remote. 

With the push of a button, the magcuffs opened. Steve surged to his feet, bloody lines ringing his wrists from where the cuffs had bitten into his skin. He had a look on his face that was downright murderous, and he was barreling right at Tony. Faced with the full fury of Captain America, he froze and braced himself for the knuckle sandwich he was sure was coming. 

But Steve just charged by him and headed straight for Barnes. 

Tony let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He released the restraints holding Barnes to the chair and then pretended to fiddle with the interface while he tried not to listen to their conversation. Eventually, there was nothing else to do, and Clint had already claimed standing by the door like a silent badass. Tony slowly made his way across the room, making sure to hang back just far enough that neither of them could reach out and snap his neck, at least not without taking a few steps first. 

Steve had thrown his arms around Barnes and was hanging on for dear life, whispering something over and over. After a moment, Tony caught the words.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I am so sorry--"

Barnes looked over Steve’s shoulder and locked eyes with Tony. 

“Why didn’t you just kill me?” Barnes asked, his voice hoarse from screaming. He sounded completely and utterly defeated. It was then that Tony noticed the tears in the corners of is eyes.

“I just killed the Winter Soldier,” Tony said. “I think the words you’re looking for are  _ thank you _ .”

“You what?”

It was then that Tony realized Barnes probably didn’t remember the process of searching for the right memory. He probably didn’t remember anything after Barton said the last trigger word. “Hydra put some pretty nasty stuff in your mind. I just took a bit of it out.” He shrugged. It was the only movement that seemed to appropriately sum up the combination of annoyance, pride, and reluctant affection he was currently feeling.

Barnes gently pushed Steve away. "What bit?"

"Those goddamn words."

“How can you be sure?” Steve asked.

“Well, there’s one way,” Tony said, pulling the list of words up on his phone and holding it out to Steve. “Want to do the honors?”

“I…no.” He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “I don’t think I could.”

"All right," Tony said, he put his phone back in his pocket and looked at Barnes, silently asking permission. 

"Just do me a favor," Barnes said. "If this doesn't work, please don't make me dance the Charleston." 

That implied that Barnes knew how to dance the Charleston and Tony was mildly impressed. "No promises," he said, holding his hands up.

After a short hesitation that had nothing to do with Tony's joke and everything to do with what was about to happen, Barnes nodded. 

" _ Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. _ " Barnes squeezed his eyes shut and let his head fall back against the chair. " _ Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. _ " Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw Clint easing his way forward, poised to act in case something went wrong. " _ Benign. Homecoming. One. _ " He shuddered and gripped the armrest so tightly it crumpled under his hand.  " _ Freight Car. _ "

The room went still, just as it had when Clint had finished saying the words before. 

The wait was too much for Clint. "Well?"

Barnes opened his eyes and looked at them. His face was blank, his eyes hard and laser focused. When he opened his mouth, his words were Russian.

Clint let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. “Yeah, that figures.”

Steve rounded on Tony, eyes blazing. Tony was trying to decide which would be worse, a right hook from Captain America or a sanctimonious  _ I told you so _ speech, when Barnes started to laugh. It was the quiet, half-delirious laugh of someone who was so far past exhausted that they'd circled right back around to hyper. "Gotcha."

Tony was reminded of the sentiment he'd had before the shit hit the fan. They would have gotten on like a house on fire.

“It worked?” Steve said. He was looking at Barnes like he was the most important thing in the world. Tony felt like he was intruding on something.

Barnes nodded, giving Steve a weak smile. “Thank you,” he said to Tony.

Tony just sniffed and put his glasses on. Adoring fans he could handle, but genuine, heartfelt thanks? “Don’t mention it. I gotta bounce. Probably have a senate hearing or five waiting for me back in the States.” He turned before anyone could stop him, desperate to get away so he could process the thousand and one emotions he was currently feeling. Steve got his best friend, Barnes got his mind, Ross got what was coming to him, and what did he get? He’d just given a man his life back. But his parents were still dead, and his family was still broken.

He was nearly to the door when Steve called out, “Tony, wait!”

With a long suffering sigh, he turned. Steve was jogging over. Behind him, Clint was helping Barnes out of the chair.

“Thank you. Really, this is… I can’t believe he’s…” Steve just shook his head in sunny disbelief.

He’d never seen Steve so blown away he was actually speechless. He decided to be generous and help him out a bit. “Yeah, well, don’t go all soft on me and expect me to make him a new arm.”

Steve actually chuckled at that. “Look, I’m sorry for that,” he said, waving vaguely at the dent he’d left in the wall when Tony blasted him across the room. “I just… I really thought you wanted to kill him.”

“I thought so too,” Tony said, and suddenly the tightness in his chest was gone. “I changed my mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man. I can't believed I finally finished this. And with a beast of a final chapter! Thank you all so so much for reading and commenting and kudo-ing! You rock and I appreciate you so much.
> 
> My mind's abuzz with plans for new fics, but that might just be the exhilaration of having finally finished this one... I'm sure I'll start a new one eventually.
> 
> :)


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